Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1880-1940 : 6th Edition [Paperback]

George Heard Hamilton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300056494 | ISBN-13: 978-0300056495 | Publication Date: September 10, 1989 | Edition: 6

Traces the origins and growth of modern art, assessing the intrinsic qualities of individual works and describing the social forces in play. The book covers various areas including works of Impressionism, Cubism, Constructivism and Surrealism.

Product Details

• Paperback: 610 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 6 edition (September 10, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300056494
• ISBN-13: 978-0300056495
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #36 in Books > Arts & Photography > Sculpture

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Dated, even with updating, January 23, 2006

By 

Christopher R. DeFay (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Painting and Sculpture in Europe: 1880-1940 (Hist of Art) (Paperback)

Initially written in 1966, this survey of 19th and 20th century modern art is defintely showing its age. Despite five revisions between 1971 and 1993, most of the references to critical scholarship date from the 1950s and 1960s. I do not imagine this book will be revised again. The author maintains a rather tradition and connoisseur-bound view of the periods under consideration that sometimes lacks engagement and vibrancy. It is as if the revolution in art criticism during the 60s/70s/80s never happened.

I don't know the reason for why the period 1880 to 1940 was chosen as the years bracketing this survey, but the result of choosing the 1880 date is that two of the major figures in French Modernism (Courbet and Manet) are conspicuously absent. The author has also chosen to focus on individual artists, sometimes at the expense of more fully covering art movements and social context within which they emerged.

Images are decently chosen, though small and primarily black and white. Focus of the text is on established European artists with barely a mention of artists in North America.

Readers might consider the following Open University texts covering similar ground to Hamilton but in a more engaging manner:

Modernity and Modernism : French Painting in the Nineteenth Century, by Francis Frascina, et al.
Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction : The Early Twentieth Century, by Gill Perry, et al.
Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism : Art Between the Wars, by David Batchelor, et al.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Looking for a nice overview?, April 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1880-1940 : 6th Edition (Paperback)

If one reads this book in hopes of getting a fairly complete overview of art of the early Twentieth Century, they will not be disappointed. However, if one is looking for something more in depth, with various examples of an artists oevure, then perhaps they should keep looking. One of this book's greatest virtues as an overview is that it does not assume a great deal of knowledge of art on the part of the reader and is relatively engaging. However, images are few and far between and not always of the best quality, which I find to be an integral part of an art historical publication.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you!, September 13, 2010

By 

MaryS - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1880-1940 : 6th Edition (Paperback)

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