Publication Date: February 24, 2009 | Series: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Working in his villa in the south of France, Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) suffused his late canvases with radiant Mediterranean light and dazzling color. Although his subjects were close at hand—usually everyday domestic scenes—Bonnard rarely painted from life. Instead, he made pencil sketches in diaries and relied on these, along with his memory, as he executed the works in his studio. These interiors thus often conflate details from the artist’s daily life with fleeting, mysterious evocations of his past. The spectral figures who appear at the margins of the canvases, overshadowed by brilliantly colored baskets of fruit or other props, create an atmosphere of profound ambiguity and puzzling abstraction: the mundane rendered in a wholly new pictorial language.
The 75 paintings, drawings, and watercolors in this volume, some rarely seen treasures from private collections, all made between 1923 and 1947, are central to the ongoing reappraisal of Bonnard as a leading figure of French modernism.
“. . . this handsome volume includes seventy-five carefully selected works from galleries and private collections from around the world . . . These works are fresh, engaging and superbly presented in a book that will warm the heart of each and every art lover.” — Good Book Guide
(Good Book Guide )
About the Author
Dita Amory is Associate Curator, Robert Lehman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Product Details
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art (February 24, 2009)
This review is from: Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (Hardcover)
After seeing the wonderful exhibit at the Met, I was all set to buy this book. What a disappointment. I can't say anything about the text which is probably distinguished, but the Yale U. press and the Met should be ashamed of themselves for the poor quality of these reproductions that aren't even close to better books that suggest the nuances and richness of Bonnard's great paintings. The high price of art books is justified by high quality reproductions. This is not.
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This review is from: Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (Hardcover)
This show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was stunning and it's a shame that the catalogue is such a stinker. The reproductions are terrible -- nothing like Bonnard's colour. The contrast is super high and the colour is very heightened and garish.
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This review is from: Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (Hardcover)
A very technical book of a wonderful exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Small reproduction that do not do justice to the paintings that were shown.
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