From Publishers Weekly
Eminent art historian Robert L. Herbert (Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society) is emeritus professor at Mount Holyoke College after a long career at Yale. His commonsense approach to 19th-century art has long been a refreshment; his pioneering method of studying Impressionists, by turning the paintings upside down to see how the paint was applied, remains legendary. Seurat: Drawings and Paintings is a collection of his various articles on 19th-century French painter Georges Seurat, one of his specialties, written over the years for various hard-to-find journals, including a particularly well-reasoned essay on the painting Parade. Often summed up as "the dot painter" for his pointillist style, Seurat in fact had many other intriguing preoccupations as an artist, which Herbert expertly reveals.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In gathering this excellent selection of his previously published studies of Seurat's art, Herbert has shaped a synthesis of the artist's achievement that is simultaneously profound, accessible, and concise. In addition to his sharp articulation of the artist's creative processes and rapid stylistic development, the examination of individual paintings and drawings is marked by a sharply honed and refined formalistic sensibility. The author's ability to evoke the works' distinctive visual qualities combines with a cautious articulation of the theoretical and scientific ideas, which impacted upon the formulation of Seurat's Neo-Impressionist style. At the same time, and without a tinge of partisan crie de coeur, Seurat's work is accommodated within a context of late 19th-century social thought. Not slighted either are the varied and disparate art historical sources that infused and helped shape his genius. Like the artist's work itself, Herbert's study is marked by a clarity of structure, a luminous yet meticulous touch, and a profound undergirding of rigorous intelligence. Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
