"On Modern Beauty - Three Paintings by Manet, Gauguin, and Cezanne" by Richard R Brettell

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On Modern Beauty - Three Paintings by Manet, Gauguin, and Cezanne Richard R Brettell

Series:
Getty Publications - (Yale)
Format:
Paperback / softback
Publication date:
11 Jun 2019
ISBN:
9781606066065
Imprint:
Getty Publications
Dimensions:
103 pages: 221 x 164 x 10mm

Categories:

As the discipline of art history has moved away from connoisseurship, the notion of beauty has become increasingly problematic. Both culturally and personally subjective, the term is difficult to define and nearly universally avoided. In this insightful book, Richard R. Brettell, one of the leading authorities on Impressionism and French art of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, dares to confront the concept of modern beauty head-on. This is not a study of aesthetic philosophy, but rather a richly contextualised look at the ambitions of specific artists and artworks at a particular time and place. Brettell shapes his manifesto around three masterworks from the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum: Edouard Manet's 'Jeanne' (Spring), Paul Gauguin's 'Arii Matamoe' (The Royal End) and Paul Cezanne's 'Young Italian Woman at a Table'. The provocative and wide-ranging discussion reveals how each of these exceptional paintings, though depicting very different subjects-a fashionable actress, a severed head and a weary working woman-enacts a revolutionary, yet enduring, icon of beauty.

Richard R. Brettell, the founding director of the Edith O'Donnell Institute of Art History and the Margaret McDermott Chair of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, passed away in 2020.

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