Vincent Van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Cornelia Homburg (Author), Elizabeth C. Childs (Author), John House (Author), Richard Thomson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Most people think of van Gogh as a tortured loner, but the engrossing Vincent van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard makes plain his great desire to be part of the art world of his time. Focusing on the years between 1886 (when he came to Paris) and 1890 (the year of his death), four art historians examine the competitive spirit of young radical painters who searched for ways to express their reactions to an industrialized world increasingly remote from the idealized values of peasant life. The painters (who included Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Signac, and Émile Bernard) were vastly different from one another in style and temperament. Yet van Gogh embraced them all as "painters of the petit boulevard"--fellow unrecognized artists toiling in out-of-the-way studios and showing their work in cafés rather than in swank galleries. Dreaming of founding a colony of like-minded painters he called "The Studio of the South," van Gogh decamped to Arles in 1888. But the only artist who joined him, for two stressful months, was Gauguin. Both were loners, and differences loomed large. While van Gogh worked from nature, conveying his physical engagement with thick marks on canvas, Gauguin looked inward, abstracting objects with a thin application of paint. Even on a personal level, Gauguin's swaggering ease with the local women magnified van Gogh's insecurities. Each essay illuminates a different aspect of the complex personal, social, and artistic motivations that fueled each "petit boulevard" artist's search for a personal artistic identity. Lavishly illustrated and fluidly written, this book is the catalog for an exhibition of the same name at the St. Louis Art Museum (through May 13, 2001) and the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt (June 8-September 2, 2001). --Cathy Curtis

Product Description
Parisian avant-garde artists of the late 1880s and early '90s made up the circle Vincent and Theo van Gogh called the "petit boulevard." Among this group of struggling artists, Vincent, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard, Georges Seurat and others fought, with brilliant results, to establish their careers and create a truly modern art.

Vincent van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard is a fresh look at this post-impressionist generation, and the extraordinary array of styles and movements they created. From the pointillist style of Seurat and his group, to the emerging symbolism of Gauguin and his circle, to the unique vision of Vincent van Gogh, this was the most exciting and influential avant-garde in the history of modern art. Bringing a wealth of new scholarship and insights to a neglected moment in art history, this book gathers together masterworks by some of the most popular artists of all time.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli; illustrated edition edition (February 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847823326
• ISBN-13: 978-0847823321
• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 9.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,929,546 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent companion to the exhibition, May 17, 2001

By	"xboingox" (Overland, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews

The Impressionist movement never really impressed me until I went and experienced this exhibit. This book is a great companion to the exhibit, going into much greater detail than the audio tour did, but can be equally appreciated (as a stand alone art history text) if you couldn't make it to St. Louis. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for information on some of the lesser known impressionists (those of the Petit Boulevard), as well as information on this brief period in van Gogh's life.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful work of art....., December 1, 2001

By	Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

Having read VINCENT VAN GOGH AND THE PAINTERS OF THE PETIT BOULEVARD, I regret I did not get to the exhibt in Saint Louis or Frankfurt where it closed in September 2001. This lovely book was created as an exhibition catalogue, but one does not need to have seen the exhibition to benefit from reading the informative essays or looking at copies of beautiful works by Van Gogh, Gauguin and other memebers of the self-styled "Petit Boulevard" artists group.

Essays on topics related to the subject are preceded by text written by the editor and exhibit curator, Cornelia Homberg, ("Vincent van Gogh's Avant-Garde Strategies"). Homberg suggests the 'petit boulevard' was both an avant garde artistic movement following the Impressionists and an actual commercial location in Paris at the end of the 19th Century. The Exhibit featured works by members of the avant garde group (Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, Signac, Pissaro, Toulous-Latrec, Anquetin, Bernard and others "petit" artists).

Homberg challenges the notion that Vincent van Gogh always worked alone and that his art was a "one-off" as other critics have suggested. She says Van Gogh was a member of an artists colony located in the vicinity rue Lepic where he lived with his brother Theo (Montmartre area), that he may have coined the phrase "Petit Boulevard" (he discussed it with Theo in their letters following his removal to Arles), and he saw himself as a leader of this innovative group (which he hoped to bring to Arles as a "brotherhood" of artists).

In his essay entitled "The Cultural Geography of the Petit Boulevard" Richard Thomas describes the material dimensions of the place and time within which the "petit boulevard" artists worked. He describes the "off-off-Broadway/Bourbon Street" atmosphere of the bohemian artistic community -- a proletarian territory dominated by factories, caberets, taverns, le circque, brothels, and other down scale establishments (Chat Noir, Molin Rouge) where 'decadent iconograpy' was born. He says artists such as Toulouse Latrec, Steinlin, Willith, and others developed commercial prints depicting this mileau.

In the third essay, Elizabeth Childs describes the escape of Gauguin and Seurat to Pont Aven and Van Gogh to Arles following their Paris adventures. Here the artists hoped to reconnect with the timeless cycles of nature and leave the crass, commercial, class-ridden city behind. Childs says once Gauguin reached Pont Aven, the Celtic Catholic nature of Brittany spurred Gauguin to develop a medieval stain-glass cloisonnist style of art. She contrasts Gauguin's work with Van Gogh's 'rural' art which he based on a love of Japanese prints (by Hiroshege and others) and what he fancied to be Japanese culture, as well as the Barbizon style which included Daumier and Millet. In the last essay, John House discusses landscapes by Van Gogh (who influenced by his Dutch predecessor Rembrandt and the French Millet) as well as other artists of the period including Gauguin.

The book is filled beautiful reproductions of the paintings and other works included in the Exhibit (prints and photographs of the various items of art, the people involved, and the places they lived and worked). Sadly, one would have to do quite a bit of traveling to recapitulate the Exhibit, and then the synergistic effect would be missing. On the other hand, the book is a solid testament to the art that followed Impressionism. Although I had seen many of the paintings in their home museums (National Gallery, Chicago Art Institute, D'Orsay, Van Gogh Museum, etc.) I had not seen some of the works in private hands, nor the photographs of the period. This book is a valuable addition to my collection.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, October 15, 2007

By	David Simms Davey S - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vincent Van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard (Hardcover)

if you're intrigued with Van Gogh you'll enjoy this. But I don't recommend it to those who are not interested in the subjexct matter. If you're not into the subject you will find it dry.

I am enthralled with the life of this great artist, so I was into the book. To me it was fascinating.