A fable of modern art / Dore Ashton.
By: Ashton, Dore
.
Material type: 
BookPublisher: Berkeley : University of California Press, 1991Description: 128 p., [32] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm.ISBN: 0520073010.Subject(s): Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850. Chef-d'œuvre inconnu -- Influence | Arts, Modern -- 19th century | Arts, Modern -- 20th century | Nature (Aesthetics)DDC classification: 700.904
| Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Lending | MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending | 700.904 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00059306 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Dore Ashton's masterly analysis of modern art grows out of a consideration of Balzac's brilliant and little known 'philosophic' story The Unknown Masterpiece in which the concerns of C#65533;zanne, Picasso, and the abstract expressionists are strikingly prefigured. Balzac's fable is discussed not only within the context from which it emerged--early nineteenth-century romanticism--but also in its embodiment of various attitudes towards art. Ashton illuminates a web of associations linking Balzac to C#65533;zanne, Rilke, Schoenberg, Kandinsky and Picasso as they struggle with the yearning to express the inexpressible, to make concrete the abstract.
As Professor Ashton develops the conjectures of her book she reveals the interrelations of literature, music, and art and the basic problems which engage or beset the contemporary artist and those who seek to understand and appreciate contemporary art. This is a book of extreme originality which ranges so widely and offers such valuable insights that it forms an important contribution not only to the history of art and culture, but also to the history of ideas.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-125) and index.
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Dore Ashton was born Dorothea Shapiro in Newark, New Jersey on May 21, 1928. She received a bachelor's degree in literature from the University of Wisconsin in 1949 and a master's degree in art history from Harvard University in 1950. After leaving Harvard, she began writing reviews for Art Digest and soon became an associate editor. In 1955, she became an art reviewer for The New York Times. She left the newspaper in November 1960. She taught art history at the School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union and the New School.She wrote numerous books during her lifetime including The Unknown Shore: A View of Contemporary Art, A Reading of Modern Art, The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning, A Joseph Cornell Album, "Yes, but ¿: A Critical Study of Philip Guston, A Fable of Modern Art, American Art Since 1945, About Rothko, and Noguchi East and West. Many of her essays were collected in Out of the Whirlwind: Three Decades of Arts Commentary. In 1963, the College Art Association gave her and the architecture critic Lewis Mumford the first Frank Jewett Mather Awards for distinguished arts journalism. She died on January 30, 2017 at the age of 88.
(Bowker Author Biography)