Francis Frascina Bücher

Modern Art and Modernism offers first-hand material for the study of issues central to the development of modern art, its theory and criticism. The history of modern art is not simply a history of works of art, it is also a history of ideas and interpretations. The works of critics and theorists have not merely been influential in deciding how modern art is to be seen and understood, they have also influenced the course it has taken. The nature of modern art cannot be understood without some analysis of the concept of Modernism itself. Modern Art and Modernism presents a selection of texts by the major contributors to debate on this subject, from Baudelaire to Zola in the 19th century to Greenburg and T J Clark on our own times. It offers a balanced selection of essays by contributors to the mainstream of Modernist criticism, representative examples of writing on the themes of abstraction and expressionism in modern art, and a number of important contributions to the discussion of aesthetics and the social role of the artist.

This volume presents a survey of art from the first two decades of the twentieth century. The authors begin by exploring how aspects of the primitive were invoked by the rural artists' colonies formed in France and Germany at the end of the nineteenth century and by the work of the Fauves and the German Expressionists a few years later. The book then develops an analysis of Cubist works based on semiotic theory, considering the social and cultural values encoded in such signifying systems, and investigating the relationship between representation and ideology. The final chapter considers some problems of interpretation and evolution posed by specific examples of abstract art ranging from Malevich to Mondrian.

The first volume in this series focuses on aspects of Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in Paris between 1848 and 1900. The book demonstrates how some historians view this art as representative of the social, historical and economic circumstances in which it was produced.