Synopses & Reviews
Considered an Impressionist, as well as a Symbolist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), the American-born artist who was based for much of his working life in London, played a crucially formative part in the development of twentieth-century modernism. Whistler is best known for his atmospheric "nocturnes" of the river Thames, and his refusal to conform to the pictorial convention that art should tell a story. Instead, he gave his pictures musical titles, and said "Art should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, such as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like." In 1877 Whistler successfully sued the renowned critic John Ruskin who criticized him for "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face" when Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket was exhibited in the newly opened and luxuriously appointed Grosvenor Gallery. Contrary to the myth that divorces modernist painting from literature, this new interpretation of Whistler shows that his art was profoundly influenced by it, and by his relationship with the three greatest modern poets of the age, Baudelaire, Swinburne, and Mallarme, as well as Edgar Allen Poe. The book also examines the nature of Whistler's modernity, his relationships with English and French painting, and throws new light on the famous libel trial with Ruskin. In this reassessment, Whistler's most important innovations are shown to have been his recognition of the decorative principles of western art, and the invention of new technologies based on tradition.