24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Skip it., December 27, 2005
I too had this book for a college 19th century art course. Most of the movements were not new to me and I dearly love most art of the period. But for anyone new to it this will be an incredibly boring read, too much bogged down in marxism and political correctness. Eisenman; a self-professed "Marxist-Art Historian" seems unable to speak of any movement without making it into classs warfare or accusing artists of being sexist or rascist, while completely ingnoring the historical context. As with many art history surveys Eisenman also suffers the delusion that there is something inherently wrong with academic art and that the only worthwhile art of the 19th century was made in France.
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Academic overview of nineteenth century art, December 7, 2004
This is a text based overview of art in the 1800's. It has a text to picture ratio similar to that in Art by Hartt. It has a similar (but obviously more specific) audience. Reproductions are high quality. Most are black and white - maybe 20 percent color. Here the color plates are mixed throughout the book, instead of all together in one color section. So all the thematically similar pictures are grouped together with the information about them. Read through the chapter titles and if you like several of the artists in question then this may be a good book to have reproductions of their work.
Outline of Nineteenth Century Art:
Classicism and Romanticism
Patriotism and Virtue: David to the Young Ingres
Classicism in Crisis: Gross to Delacroix
The Tensions of Enlightenment: Goya
Visionary History Painting: Blake and His Contemporaries
Nature Historicized: Constable, Turner, and Romantic Landscape Painting
New World Frontiers
Old World, New World: The Encounter of Cultures on the American Frontier
Black and White in America
Realism and Naturalism
The Generation of 1830 and the Crisis in the Public Sphere
The Rhetoric of Realism: Courbet and the Origin of the Avant-Garde
The Decline of History Painting: Germany, Italy, and France
Modern Art and Life
Manet and the Impressionists
Issues of Gender in Cassatt and Eakins
Mass Culture and Utopia: Seurat and Neoimpressionism
Abstraction and Populism: Van Gough
Symbolism and the Dialectics of Retreat
The Failure and Success of Cezanne
chronology, bibliography, list of illustrations and index
This is a good book for university libraries. Because realistic art styles have traditionally been overlooked in favor of more abstract styles, there is a gap in history books that cover art. This is a good detailed overview of overlooked art. The sections on American art particularly valuable in filling a potential gap. American art in this time period had a documentary function. (European art had more of an idealized function as from Ruskin or acted more in the traditional way as a status symbol. Also European movements such as Pre-Raphealitism have recently become popular and widely available, so this is not such a big gap.) Having coverage of American art from this time period is especially desirable.
I don't think that this is such a good book for individuals to buy, unless you already know what it is. It is written and intended for academic study (so the writing is dense). Look through the book at a book shop or library first.
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