Synopses & Reviews
Long considered the survey of modern art, this engrossing and liberally illustrated text traces the development of trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Retaining its comprehensive nature and chronological approach, it now comes thoroughly reworked by Elizabeth Mansfield, an experienced art historian and writer, with refreshing new analyses, a considerably expanded picture program, and a more absorbing and unified narrative.
Review
For over four decades, H. H. Arnason's History of Modern Art has been an indispensible guide to a large and complex subject. Revised and expanded by co-author Elizabeth C. Mansfield, the sixth edition presents a comprehensive overview of modern art with fascinating new material on such topics as Postmodernism, globalization, and art institutions in the twenty-first century.
Alan Wallach, William and Mary College
Elizabeth Mansfield’s revised History of Modern Art is as expansive as modernism itself. Beginning at 19th-century realism in France and ending with contemporary globalization, her survey embraces an impressive range of aesthetic developments across numerous media, I especially admire how she organizes modernism’s great diversity under a clear interpretative framework maintained through all 27 chapters. Her book will prove an invaluable tool for educators.
Andrés Mario Zervigón, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Art History, Rutgers University.
Bravo. Most thorough and useful revision of a textbook I have seen in more than four decades of teaching.
Carl Goldstein, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
I will definitely adopt this revised edition as it is tremendously improved in organization and structure.
Elizabeth Mix (formerly Elizabeth Menon), Butler University
The revisions to Arnason’s History of Modern Art broaden the overall historical contexts of modernism and address more fully the implications of modernism in art and their relationship with the history of the modern Western world. The rewritten edition attempts to include more non-Western European and North American artists and is much more sophisticated in its handling of the historiography of art history.
Damon Willick, Loyola Marymount University
Exciting, more comprehensive and inclusive rather than exclusive! Mansfield’s revisions make the text far more accessible.
Barbara L. Miller, Western Washington University
Synopsis
Long considered the survey of modern art, this engrossing and liberally illustrated text traces the development of trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Retaining its comprehensive nature and chronological approach, it now comes thoroughly reworked by Elizabeth Mansfield, an experienced art historian and writer, with refreshing new analyses, a considerably expanded picture program, and a more absorbing and unified narrative.
About the Author
Elizabeth C. Mansfield is Associate Professor of art history at New York University. A scholar of modern European art and art historiography, her publications include books and articles on topics ranging from the origins of modernism to Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon to the contemporary performance and body art of Orlan. A fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2008-09, she received the College Art Association’s Charles Rufus Morey book award in 2008 for Too Beautiful to Picture: Zeus, Myth, and Mimesis.
Table of Contents
Foreword: A Short History of History of Modern Art
The Art of Looking
Experience and Interpretation
A Book That Moves with the Times
Preface
What’s New: Chapter-by-chapter revisions
1: The Origins of Modern Art
SOURCE: Théophile Gautier, preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835)
Making Art and Artists: The Role of the Critic
A Marketplace for Art
CONTEXT: Modernity and Modernism the Modern Artist
What Does It Mean to Be an Artist?: From Academic
Emulation toward Romantic Originality
Making Sense of a Turbulent World: The Legacy of Neoclassicism and Romanticism
TECHNIQUE: Printmaking Techniques
History Painting
Landscape Painting
2: The Search for Truth: Early Photography, Realism, and Impressionism
New Ways of Seeing: Photography and its Influence
TECHNIQUE: Daguerreotype versus Calotype
Only the Truth: Realism
France
England
Seizing the Moment: Impressionism and the Avant-Garde
Manet and Whistler
From Realism to Impressionism
Nineteenth-Century Art in the United States
Early American Artists and the Hudson River School
New Styles and Techniques in Later Nineteenth-
SOURCE: Charles Baudelaire, from his “Salon of 1859”
Century American Art
3: Post-Impressionism
The Poetic Science of Color: Seurat and the Neo-Impressionists
Form and Nature: Paul Cézanne
Early Career and Relation to Impressionism
Later Career
The Triumph of Imagination: Symbolism
Reverie and Representation: Moreau, Puvis, and Redon
The Naive Art of Henri Rousseau
An Art Reborn: Rodin and Sculpture at the Fin-de-Siècle
Early Career and The Gates of Hell
The Burghers of Calais and Later Career
Exploring New Possibilities: Claudel and Rosso
Primitivism and the Avant-Garde: Gauguin and Van Gogh
Gauguin
SOURCE: Paul Gauguin, from Noa Noa (1893)
Van Gogh
SOURCE: Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother Theo van Gogh, 6 August 1888
A New Generation of Prophets: The Nabis
Vuillard and Bonnard
Montmartre: At Home with the Avant-Garde
4: The Origins of Modern Architecture and Design
Safeguarding Culture: Revivalist Tendencies in Nineteenth-Century Architecture
American Classicism
European Eclecticism
“A Return to Simplicity”: The Arts and Crafts Movement and Experimental Architecture
Experiments in Synthesis: Modernism beside the Hearth
Palaces of Iron and Glass: The Influence of Industry
SOURCE: Joris-Karl Huysmans, from the review Le Fer, 1889
“Form Follows Function”: The Chicago School and the
Origins of the Skyscraper
SOURCE: Louis Sullivan, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” 1896
5: Art Nouveau and the Beginnings of Expressionism
With Beauty at the Reins of Industry: Aestheticism and Art Nouveau
Natural Forms for the Machine