Quarto a paperback art book
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Painter's Treasure,
This review is from: Twilight of Painting (Paperback)
If you have ever wondered what gave rise to modern art, and you have ever questioned why standards of workmanship declined from the excellence of the 18th century to the shoddiness of the 20th, then this is the book for you. If you would like to have art history explained by a painter, in terms of painting, then this is the book for you. If, like me, you have been searching all your life for some rational explanation to our "Modern Art", then this is the book for you.Gammell was a competent, if not renowned, painter. This book was written in 1946. By that time, all of the most accomplished painters of the 19th century had died and no one alive could create out of imagination the heroic work that had been so prized since the Renaissance. Gammell explains the real meaning of impressionism and the unfortunate hostility of the two major "schools", the impressionist vs the academics. He explains why the impressionists won and how art degenerated into the current chaos. He explains why impressionism has the unfinished look. First because it seems appropriate for the artists' purposes, but more importantly, because starting is easy and finishing is difficult. With the revolt of the impressionists against the academies, they never finished their academic training, (so in fact, they didn't know how to finish a painting to the degree of the prior centuries). For the non-painter, this books gives you the sanction to look at modern art and say, it may be art, but it's not finished enough, interesting, polished, challenging or important enough for me. I recommend it highly.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Masterpiece,
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This review is from: Twilight of Painting (Paperback)
I'd heard about his book for years, and now finally have bought a copy and am deeply enjoying it. Gammell is remarkably well-informed, patient and even handed. He makes plain his opinion at the very start, and then works like a skilled surgeon to reveal why he believes what he does.Gammell believes that painting was irretrievably diminished by the split between academic and impressionist painters in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. Each of the two opposing camps carried forward only its own limited version of the art of painting, which was unfortunate enough. However, the final tragedy was the marginalizing of academic teaching, which made it inevitable that painting would become only a shadow of its former self. The wonder is, the book is entirely undated in terms of its analysis of modern art and modern art's relationship to the European tradition in painting. Educated people still feel obliged to disdain perfectly conceived and executed academic art and to give lip service to the idea that there is something mysteriously wonderful about modernist drips and squiggles that no one can understand or explain. This book was published in 1946. Outside of a handful of art schools, and a tiny number of art galleries, it's still 1946.
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