Customer Reviews

The Fauve Landscape

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This book documents what was quite possibly the largest and finest exhibition ever devoted solely to fauve painting. This brief movement, sandwiched between the towering achievements of impressionism, post-impressionism, and cubism, is a relatively overlooked one in the history of 20th century art. Concentrating on landscape painting as the heart of the fauvist view of reality, the essays are some very fine scholarly re-appraisals of the social and economic history of fauvism. The book itself is beautiful, with a superior design and extremely high standards of photographic reproduction. My only quibble is the near-total exclusion of figure-painting from the discussion (even as a point of comparison), and the authors' focus on social history leaves little space for aesthetic issues to be discussed. The essays treat these fantastically beautiful paintings as mere documents of economic relationships, a common art-historical focus nowadays, but one which does little to educate the reader in the marvelous way of seeing represented by these images.

This large and expensive 350 page book provides an in-depth look at Fauvism, however I would expect a book of this size and calibre to be complemented by equally impressive reproductions. Many of the reproductions are too small for my liking, some pages with 2 or even 3 smallish reproductions, and far too many in black and white. This book is more geared towards the art history lover as opposed to painters and those of us who take great delight in simply looking at art.

Early in this wonderful book a writer credits the Fauves with birthing modern art. I think that's true. And this extensive text--rich with color samples--bears that out. It was the book sold at the Los Angeles MOMA for a 1990 show of the same name.
I'm going through it slowly, like a very fine meal. And so far, I have particularly enjoyed an almost month-by-month chronology of this tight little group--with each other and with the critical public--in the years 1904 through 1908.
I'm a painter. And I have been very influenced by the French artists at the end of the 19th Century. This book is helping me get rid of the small brushstrokes and timid colors. Enjoy.

Most comprehensive review of the "Fauves". Well illustrated in both color and B&W representations of this art. Excellent biographies of these painters. LACMA should be commended for producing this historical review. Judy Freeman did a masterful job with the collection.

A lot have time was put into writing this book I can tell by the way it was written. Very good book on a hard period of art to write about.