From Library Journal
Watkins (Matisse, Oxford, 1985) argues for a reappraisal of Bonnard, not as the last of the Impressionists but as a formalist and decorative painter in the 20th century. Discussing his affiliation with Vuillard and the other Nabis, the author draws from the artist's work to demonstrate the influences of Gauguin, Japanese prints, and the later Degas. Withdrawing from the Paris of the 1890s into his own rich, personal, painterly iconography, Bonnard succeeded in creating intimate interiors, and his identification with his more analytical contemporary, Matisse, is apparent. Other French artists, such as Braque, whose style can be seen in some of Bonnard's still lifes, is not named, although the Cubists are mentioned as an interest. It does seem a bit stretched when Watkins implies that Bonnard influenced Monet. Overall, however, the book is well researched and contains many illustrations emphasizing Bonnard's deep involvement with color. An interesting contemporary view for art history scholars, this is recommended for academic collections.
Ellen Bates, New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Ellen Bates, New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Book Description
Bonnard found early fame among the Nabis, the radical young disciples of Gauguin, and went on with Vuillard to create a new intimist art of psychologically charged interiors. But from 1900 he turned back towards Impressionism, and his art recreates moments of heightened subjectivity, color, and space. His greatest works explore his claustrophobic relationship with Marthe, his wife; in his seventies he also completed some of the most poignant self-portraits in Western art. This new account shows how these beautiful and lyrical pictures sometimes emerged from terrible circumstances. As Bonnard himself wrote shortly before his death in 1947, "one does not always sing out of happiness." Shaped in the 1890s by Mallarm and Symbolism, by Jarry and anarchism, and by the philosophy of Bergson, Bonnard's complex art took on full conviction only in the 1920s. His reassessment over the past thirty years has centered on these extraordinary late pictures, which are among the most enduring images of the twentieth century.
