Modern Art 1851-1929: Capitalism and Representation

276 Pages·1999·26.988 MB·English

by  Richard R. Brettell

■ T -TV
St ;£
History of
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/modernart18511920000bret
Modern Art 1851-1929
Oxford History of Art
Dr Richard Brettell has taught at the painting, photography, architecture, and
University of Texas, Northwestern Uni¬ museology. His books include Pissarro
versity, and Harvard University and is and Pontoise: The Painter and the Landscape
currently Professor of Aesthetic Studies (Yale, 1990) which won the Charles Rufus
at the University of Texas at Dallas. Formerly Morey Award, and, with Caroline B.
Searle Curator of European Painting at the Brettell, Painters and Peasants in the igth
Art Institute of Chicago and McDermott Century (Geneva, 1983). He was also curator
Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, he and co-author of A Day in the Country:
has been involved with museum scholarship Impressionism and the French Landscape (New
for more than twenty years, publishing arti¬ York, 1984) and The Art of Paul Gauguin
cles and catalogues in the history of modern (New York, 1988).
f
-' > -
Oxford History of Art
Modern
Art
1851-1929
Capitalism and Representation
Richard R. Brettell
'ary
TRENT UN
L <Sil Y
Ap/O
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford0x2 6dp
Oxford NewYork
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay
Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam
Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne
Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore
Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw
and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan
Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press
© Richard Brett ell iggg
First published iggg by Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the proper permission in
writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect
ofanyfair dealing for thepurpose ofresearch or private study, or criticism or review, as
permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, ig88, or in the case ofreprographic
reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing
Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should
be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without thepublishers prior consent in
anyform ofbinding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a sim ilar
condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available
o-ig-28422 o-X Pbk
10 98765432
Picture Research by Elisabeth Agate
Printed in Hong Kong
on acid-free paper by
C&C Offset Printing Co., Ltd
For George Heard Hamilton and Peter Gay
In memory of David Meyerson

Contents
Introduction The Great Exhibition of 1851, London i
Paris: the capital of modern art 3
New technology 3
The beginnings of modern art 3
PARTI REALISM TO SURREALISM 9
Realism 13
Impressionism 13
Symbolism 19
Post-Impressionism 21
Neo-Impressionism 24
Synthetism 26
TheNabis 27
The Fauves 29
Expressionism 30
Cubism 32
Futurism 33
Orphism 36
Vorticism 38
Suprematism/Constructivism 39
Neo-Plasticism 40
Dada 42
Purism 43
Surrealism 44
The ‘-ism’ problem 46
vii
PART II THE CONDITIONS FOR MODERN ART 49
Chapter 1 Urban Capitalism 51
Paris and the birth of the modern city 52
Capitalist society 56
The commodification of art 58
The modern condition 60
Chapter 2 Modernity, Representation, and the Accessible Image 65
The art museum 67
Temporary exhibitions 70
Lithography 72
Photography 74
Conclusion
78
PART III THE ARTIST’S RESPONSE 81
Chapter 3 Representation, Vision, and ‘Reality’: The Art of Seeing
83
The human eye 86
Transparency and unmediated modernism
87
Surface fetishism and unmediated modernism 89
Photography and unmediated modernism 92
Beyond the oil sketch
95
Cubism
97
Chapter 4 Image/Modernism and the Graphic Traffic
io5
The Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood no
Puvis de Chavannes and Gustave Moreau: image/modernism
outside the avant-garde in
Image/modernism outside France 114
Exhibitions ol the avant-garde
116
Fragmentation, dislocation, and recombination 120
PART IV ICONOLOGY
125
Introduction
127
Chapter 5 Sexuality and the Body
Ffi
Manet’s bodies
!3I
viii CONTENTS