Customer Reviews

Ideal and Reality: The Image of the Body in 20th-Century Art from Bonnard to Warhol

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A wonderful compilation of different drawing styles by a wide spread group of artists. The prints are well presented.

This handsome book was published as a 'catalogue' to accompany an exhibition of over 200 works of art at the Salzburg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in 1999. IDEAL AND REALITY: The Image of the Body in 20th Century Art from Bonnard to Warhol - the title of the exhibition and the catalogue - describes well the feast that is in store for art lovers who crave a well integrated overview of how the human body was perceived by the artists of the 20th Century - the body being the only constant as subject in this panorama of rapidly changing schools of art. The introduction by the curator, Peter Weiermair, is brief but suggests the many expositions and contradictions that faced both artist and public during the last century. One example line of thought embraces the turmoil of understated sexuality in the early drawings of Schiele, Klimt, and Rodin to the blatant freedom of expression of Paul Cadmus, Jared French, David Hockney, Francesco Clemente and Eric Fischl. The real joy of this book is the fact that each of the art works illustrated (some 140) is given a full page with excellent color separations, and high quality paper. And while most of the artists ae well known, there are some surprises that reaffirm the fact that we can't know ALL the gifted people who have drawn the model. Some artist rarely included in such exhibitions (such as Horst Janssen, Francisco Lopez, Alfons Walde, Franz Wiegle) are given equal space with Picasso, Bonnard, Rodin, Beuys, Lucian Freud, Vuillard etc. This is a book to add depth to every library that loves the figure!