Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

For more than a decade, the various and relatively new art-historical methodologies (e.g., feminist, semiotic, psychoanalytic, social) have been gaining increasing exposure and acceptance through articles, essays in exhibition catalogs, monographs, and reference works--e.g., W. Eugene Kleinbauer's historiographic essay "The Field of Art History" in Research Guide to the History of Western Art (CH, Mar'83); the much shorter, through more current, discussion, "The Literature of the Discipline," in Essential Art History, ed. by Michael Greenhalgh and Paul Duro (London, 1992); and several of the "State of Research" essays and related articles published in The Art Bulletin from 1986 to 1991. Although art-historical publications that do not demonstrate the explicit methodological intent such as is displayed in the above-mentioned literature may clearly make the reader aware of the particular bias in place, more often it is only gradually that the reader becomes aware of an author's methodological stance. This is even more the case for surveys, whether broad or more specialized. Therefore, the present four-volume publication, which has been prepared as part of an Open University course in London, is most welcome. Each of four volumes, which can stand alone, is well produced, reasonably priced, and replete with high-quality black-and-white and color plates. More important, the volumes offer explicitly stated and argued examples of methodological perspectives by a distinguished group of seven British art historians, one scholar of educational technology, and one artist and writer, all but one of whom are currently lecturers, staff tutors, or readers associated with the Open University program. Most, if not all, are well known to American readers, not only from their occasional articles in American art periodicals or from their frequent contributions to British periodicals, but also from monographs, such as Tamar Garb's Women Impressionists (1986) and Berthe Morisot, coauthored with Kathleen Adler (CH, Nov'87), and from a number of anthologies--all useful and well-respected publications, but specialized and therefore limited as to audience. Publication of the four volumes under review should change all that, for the set presents the consistency and wide appeal of a survey while at the same time providing individually focused and methodologically explicit essays in the form of chapters on specialized topics relating to limited periods of time. Although architecture is covered to some extent in the series, the emphasis is on painting and sculpture, with some attention given to the graphic arts. The series is introduced at the beginning of Volume 1 by Briony Fer, whose excellent discussion covers the various approaches that characterize the current art-historical debates; covers questions such as "What Is Modern?" and "After Modernity?"; and provides the reader with theoretical and methodological superstructures that anchor and embrace the ensuing essays in this and other volumes. In succeeding chapters, N. Blake and F. Frascina write from the perspective of the social historian of art ("Modern Practices of Art and Modernity"); C. Harrison considers the subject from an aesthetic perspective, arguing that the relationship between modern life and modern painting cannot be established entirely by an examination of the social, historical, and economic circumstances of the artistic production ("Impressionism, Modernism and Originality"); and Garb discusses aspects of Impressionist paintings from a feminist perspective. Volume 2 begins with G. Perry's chapter, "Primitivism and the ^D '"; in the next chapter Frascina investigates and produces an analytical form for Cubist works, which is derived from semiotic theory, distinguishing between mainstream and social semiotics; concluding the volume, Harrison discusses problems of interpretation and evaluation elicited by specific examples of abstract art by Malevich and by Mondrian. Debates in and about the avant-garde between WW I and WW II constitute the subject of Volume 3. D. Batchelor considers post-WW I art in France, predominantly in terms of the relationship between artistic developments and social conditions, although discussion includes ways in which art can become independent of such conditions. Fer takes up the emergence of the "language of construction and the construction of language," and, in a second chapter, "Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis," considers the provocative relationships among these three, studies a wide range of textual and photographic sources, and reviews Surrealist journals and the contribution of Georges Bataille. P. Wood considers the debate over the question of realism in art, with emphasis on Soviet Russia and Weimar Germany. Volume 4 contains chapters by Harris (on Modernism and culture in America, 1930-60), Frascina (on the "politics of representation"), Harrison and Wood (on high Modernism of the 1960s and implications of the current postmodernism debate for art today). No chapter footnotes or endnotes in any of the volumes, but there are valuable sections of bibliographic references, and each volume includes a good index and a useful preface. The intellectual integrity that permeates each volume, the excellent production qualities, and the overall superb quality of this specialized survey of modern art--all recommend this set highly for academic collections and for large public J. Weidman Oberlin College

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Francis Frascina and Gill Perry are Lecturers in Art History, Nigel Blake is Lecturer in Educational Technology, and Charles Harrison is Staff Tutor and Reader in Art History at the Open University. Briony Fer and Tamar Garb are Lecturers in Art History at University College, London University.