French Art, Art Nouveau, Modernismo, Etc.

Edouard Vuillard

Name: Edouard Vuillard
Author: Guy Cogeval
ISBN: 9780300097375

by Guy Cogeval

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Overview

"The long and illustrious career of Edouard Vuillard spans the fin-de-siecle and the first four decades of the twentieth century, during which time the French painter, printmaker, and photographer created an extraordinary body of work. This is the first volume to explore Vuillard's rich and varied career in its totality, presenting nearly 350 works that demonstrate the full range of his subject matter and reveal both the public and private sides of this quintessentially Parisian artist." "In a series of illustrated essays and catalogue entries, the authors explore Vuillard's complex and diverse artistic development, beginning with his academic training in Paris in the late 1880s and the innovative Nabi paintings of the 1890s for which he is best known, including his provocative, disquieting middle-class interiors and his work associated with the avant-garde theatre. The authors also examine Vuillard's splendid but lesser known large-scale decorations, his luminous landscapes, and the elegant portraits from the last decades of his career. In addition to paintings, the volume includes a substantial selection of drawings and graphics, together with a large group of striking photographs by the artist, many of which are published here for the first time." This illustrated catalogue accompanies the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to the work of Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940). The exhibition opens at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and travels to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais in Paris, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

The traveling exhibition on which this catalogue is based (it's now in Washington, D.C.) has been described as overstuffed in more than one review. But since one is not jostling for space or walking miles of galleries when perusing this volume, its bulk works in its favor, revealing in 463 color (and 95 b&w) reproductions the breadth of Vuillard's achievement, as well as its limits. The 334 works from the show begin in 1889, with Vuillard and Waroquy, a portrait of the artist and his friend ("of whom we know almost nothing") and plunge into the astonishing works of the 1890s, where Vuillard (along with Bonnard) took Impressionism in new directions. Cogeval, director of Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts, rightly devotes a good portion of the book to this period, providing ample sketches and studies to buttress the case for Vuillard's accomplishment, along with photos of the figures one often finds in the work (also part of the exhibit). After some uncertain mid-period works, the book presents a series of portraits from the 1930s that reveal Vuillard (1868-1940) to have been a "discreet observer of a certain modernity." That discretion, for some, may signal a dead end, but long enough looks at some of these late works reveal that "certain modernity" to have a lot in common with the denatured reality of lifestyle journalism. But whatever one's final opinion of the work, the book (which also includes four scholarly essays and a detailed chronology) allows a contemplation of it that was previously impossible. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The most comprehensive study of Edouard Vuillard's (1868-1940) work to date, this heavy tome accompanies an exhibition that travels to Washington, DC (National Gallery), Montreal, Paris, and London. Contributions to the essays and catalog entries are by international Vuillard scholars. Cogeval, director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal and author of the forthcoming catalogue raisonne on Vuillard, provides an excellent overview of Vuillard's art and life, discussing such themes as his beginnings as a Symbolist artist and member of the Nabis, his liberal political leanings, his closeness to his mother, and the more traditional portraits of his later years. Other essays explore the French artist's interest in Kodak snapshot photography, the ambiguity of forms in his art, as well as the period of his vill giature paintings, inspired by extensive summer vacations in the countryside. Catalog entries are comprehensive and scholarly, and there are 463 color and 95 black-and-white illustrations of his paintings, pastels, prints, and photographs, many of which have not been previously published. This authoritative study on an artist whose career spanned two centuries is recommended for all libraries that collect art books.-Sandra Rothenberg, Framingham State Coll. Lib., MA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.