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The Paris of the 1860s and 1870s was supposedly a brand-new city, equipped with boulevards, cafés, parks, and suburban pleasure grounds--the birthplace of those habits of commerce and leisure that constitute "modern life." Questioning those who view Impressionism solely in terms of artistic technique, T. J. Clark describes the painting of Manet, Degas, Seurat, and others as an attempt to give form to that modernity and seek out its typical representatives--be they bar-maids, boaters, prostitutes, sightseers, or petits bourgeois lunching on the grass. The central question of The Painting of Modern Life is this: did modern painting as it came into being celebrate the consumer-oriented culture of the Paris of Napoleon III, or open it to critical scrutiny? The revised edition of this classic book includes a new preface by the author. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Rutting InNascent Pop Culture
Seurat's,'La Grande Jatte' spelled the limits of petti-borgeoise modernity. For the previous 20 years, the Impressionists, led by the incomparably gifted, Manet, had attempted to make images describing this class, their appearance & behaviour. However,the Impressionists were bourgeoise & inevitably more aligned to their own class, and with the simultaneous rise of the dealer-critic system. Thus the steady sequence of shows, interviews & promotional literature issuing from managed,'creative' artists became the commonplace we experience in the arts today. The new class disappeared from Impressionist art when it was absorbed into the bourgeoise.Witness Monet's shrewd disavowal of the figure as he opted for his less offensive, touristy canon of landscapes. The detatchment of Manet's barmaid at the Follies, 1882,and the inanimate, even catatonic people in Degas's pictures of this period exemplify the new class. Clark argues that the emergence of this class was a product of the rebuilding of Paris by Baron von Haussmann. The old work centre of the city was guttered during the rejig, the trades & graves moved to new peripheries, and commercial entertainments, leisure & pleasure grew in their place to cater for this new white-collar mass public. The questionable role of prostitution is crucial to Clark's claims for this class and it is on this question that Manet is pre-eminent. This era announced the rise of capitalism and the spectacle society of which Clark is a major critical voice. Prodigious scholarship, marvellous insights, with fascinating, rarely reproduced 'secondary' art works to flesh out the theme; I can't think of a better way of teasing back the past to view the present. For more on art visit>rodmoss.com

As perfect as the paintings he discusses?
As a student of nineteenth century French painting, I think this may in fact be the finest book ever written on Parisian painting in the time of Haussmanization.Clark manages to offer an intelligent Marxist-based claim about class and the emerging Parisian landscape in the 60's without losing sight of the paintings themselves.While most scholars feel the genius of this book lies in his wonderful discussion of "what couldn't be seen in Olympia", I find the first chapter "Environs of Paris" equally fascinating in its discussion of Manet's Exposition Universelle of 1867.A MUST read for any lover of Parisian history or Manet.

An Art History Book For Anyone Interested in History
I like to think of myself as a person who is curious about a wide range of things, especially in the realm of culture and the arts. Most art history books, however, put me right to sleep, with their endless catalogs of curatorial details about brushstrokes and paint textures and influences and provenance. These detailed analyses almost never situate the paintings in any sort of context and almost never explain WHY we should be interested in these details, other than to prove ourselves worthy connoiseurs to others in the know. Clark's book is a refreshing change from such mandarin drivel. Clark begins with a lengthy discussion of the social context of the paintings he is about to discuss and only then proceeds to extended analyses of particular paintings. Clark is interested in the larger ideas and trends of the period and, most important of all, actually USES the details of the paintings as evidence in the course of making an ARGUMENT about what the paintings mean (hint to other art historians: having an argument contributes significantly to the interest of a book or article). In addition, Clark's argument about the nature of the social changes occuring in France in the 1860's and 70's is compelling and thought-provoking (be forewarned: some Marxism is involved). I found myself actually learning things about the paintings Clark discusses, and looking at them over and over again, trying to find more in them, in much the same way as I would go back to a book or a poem after reading a good piece of literary criticism. I think this book will appeal to anyone who wants to learn more about either 19th-century French painting or 19th-century France. Clark is a stimulating and perceptive guide to this crucial period in the history of painting. Bravo! ... Read more

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"Brilliant and very well illustrated."—The Art QuarterlyThere are some great painters whose influence is confined to the world of painting—others whose impact is felt more widely, who through their art are effectively moral critics, challenging the society in which they live. Manet was one of these. Rejecting the traditional ‘histories’ and ‘mythologies’ that won official acclaim, he turned instead to the life of his own time.

Yet he did not ally himself with the other painters of contemporary life, the Impressionists, preferring to engage with a Realist tradition, and at the same time drawing on the art of the past—Raphael, Titian, Velazquez, Goya – to confront his own age. It was a provocative program and one which baffled the establishment.

In this freshly researched study Dr Alan Krell examines the artist’s known intentions and the critical, sometimes bitterly hostile reception that he encountered. He sets Manet against Impressionists like Monet, Degas and Morisot, and shows how the artist’s progressive social views – on sexuality, on the position of women, on the family—were expressed through a style equally ‘modern’, yet rooted in the European artistic tradition. 185 illustrations, 30 in color ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Very good at many points, but lacks comprehensive overview
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Edoard Manet.Although T. J. Clark's masterful THE PAINTING OF MODERN LIFE is the most essential study of Manet in English, it functions better as a theoretical treatise on politics and the philosophy of art than as an introduction to Manet's art.But Clark's work keeps in sight something that Krell's work never achieves:a sense of the overall point of Manet's art.

I find overall that Krell discussed quite well various specifics in Manet's work.He is especially good at covering at an introductory level many aspects of particular paintings, and was outstanding at articulating the response of Manet's contemporaries to each work.Like many recent art historians, Krell does a great job of informing the reader of where each major work was originally shown.Previous generations of art historians ignored the context for the public debut of paintings, as if all work was created in an ahistorical vortex divorced from the real world.

What keeps me from giving this book five stars is the lack of any kind of overview of Manet's greater historical significance, and specifically how he helped change the history of art (and change it he certainly did).From reading other works one will learn that Manet was a key figure--in fact, one of the key figures--in moving painting from historical and allegorical subjects to every day subjects.But Krell hardly alludes to this, although its having been the case underlies nearly everything he writes about Manet.There is furthermore absolutely no effort to distinguish Manet from the Impressionists and the painters who followed in his wake.He might cover the way that Manet treats cafe life in contrast to Degas, or he might allude to the fact that Manet rarely painted in plain air unlike the Impressionists, but all in all he does not do an especially good job of explaining what made Manet unique.On the other hand, I found his frequent allusions to the social alienation of the characters in Manet's paintings to be very helpful.Although I was previously familiar with Manet's paintings, I had never before been made aware of the degree to which the various individuals in his paintings fail to interact with one another.Manet emerges not merely as the recorder of social life of his time, but witness to the social alienation inherent in modern life.

Does what it's supposed to do
This book is very brief -- about two hundred pages, but only about one-third of that is text -- but it accomplishes what in my view a book of this sort should do: it makes clear, on an introductory level, why Manet is an important painter and what his innovations were. Many books of this sort dwell on insignificant trivia surrounding the artist and his work, without engaging in any real analysis. This one doesn't do that; the basics of Manet's significance as an artist are made clear. It is also very readable and unpretentious.

Having said that, it does have some flaws. It tends to lose focus toward the end, and to meander somewhat. Discussion of Impressionist artists, ostensibly for purposes of comparison with Manet, seem excessive and tangential at times. And a bit more discussion of Manet's relationship to Realists such as Courbet would have been welcome.

Nevertheless, a worthwhile investment of time and money.Some good reproductions as well. ... Read more

Product Description
Manet's Modernism is the culminating work in a trilogy of books by Michael Fried exploring the roots and genesis of pictorial modernism. Fried provides an entirely new understanding not only of the art of Manet and his generation but also of the way in which the Impressionist simplification of Manet's achievement had determined subsequent accounts of pictorial modernism down to the present. Like Fried's previous books, Manet's Modernism is a milestone in the historiography of modern art.

"Beautifully produced. . . . [Fried's] thought is always stimulating, if not provocative. This is an important book, which all students of modernism, in the broadest sense, will find rewarding."--Virginia Quarterly Review

"An astonishing piece of scholarship that will cause readers to rethink their understanding of Manet's influence, ambition, and achievement."--Gary Michael, Bloomsbury Review

"An audaciously brilliant book, long awaited and as essential reading for philosophers as for art historians."--Wayne Andersen, Common Knowledge

"Art history of the highest originality and distinction."--Arthur C. Danto, New York Times Book ReviewAmazon.com Review
Our current understanding of the paintings of Manet is soheavily filtered through the lens of Impressionism that in many ways,his contributions to art history have been obscured. Called the"first modernist," his paintings marked a break with thepast and paved the way for what we've come to accept as modern art inthe treatment of the canvas as a flat surface. But during his time,Manet's modernist innovations were the object of ridicule. "It'sflat, it isn't modeled," said Courbet of the nude in the paintingOlympia. "It's like the Queen of Hearts after abath." In Manet's Modernism, Michael Fried has set out tosee Manet as his contemporaries would have seen him and to gain a moreaccurate reading of Manet's place in history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Returning to the Cardinal Manet Resource: An Appreciation
Michael Fried published his magnum opus 'Manet's Modernism: or, The Face of Painting in the 1860s' in 1996, the compendium of three books, actually, that remain the most significant resource of the study of the much maligned painter Edouard Manet.In Manet's time he was essentially hidden in the rise of the more popular Impressionists, garnering criticism form his colleagues and critics alike for works that appeared to mannered, too posed, to unnaturally lighted.But fine author and historian Michael Fried introduces some new ideas about the painter that could just place him in the echelon of the first of the Modernists.

Fried 'suggests' that Manet's paintings were for the most part tableaus created in his studio from professional and non-professional models wearing costumes suggestive of the many allegories and historical events that Manet painted.That fact, in and of itself, does not venture Manet much further thatn say, Caravaggio et al, but it is the interplay between the subjects and the painter (and hence the observer) that Fried alls to our attention.The lighting of his paintings seem to have its source from the front as opposed to the back lighting or streams of side lighting usually chosen by other painters.And to make the controversy even more interesting, Fried suggests that this studio technique coupled with various observances of his models' features (eg. barefeet that suggest having worn contemporary type shoes) may - and the important word is 'may' - represent the uses of photography as the tool Manet used!Horrors! you say? But then by the time of the painting period of the 1860s that Fried is exploring, photography was well known and fairly widely used as a means of documenting history, battles, families etc.So why should an artist of Manet's importance not include this new tool in his painting paraphernalia?

It is an interesting concept and one that in today's widely used techniques among artists of not only using photographs to reference 'sittings' for later solo studio work but also to include photography in the canvases (witness Rauschenberg, etc)makes complete sense.Gone are the prejudices against photography as not being 'pure'.And it just may be that Manet, if he indeed used photographs in his painting preparation, is more important in the overall history of painting advancement than he has been regarded!A fascinating book (even at 676 pages) and a fine addition to the library.Grady Harp, January 07 ... Read more

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A look at the "father of impressionism" traces the development of the artist's work and sets it in its historical context. More than ninety large-format, full-color illustrations throughout. ... Read more

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Edouard Manet (1832-1883) was passionate about the sea. Before becoming a painter, he spent six months at sea, and, like many Europeans of his era, he took numerous seaside holidays. Manet made his public debut as a marine painter at the Paris Salon of 1864 with The Battle of the U.S.S. "Kearsarge" and the C.S.S. "Alabama," his dramatic depiction of a U.S. Civil War naval battle off the coast of France, and he continued to paint seascapes throughout his career. These extraordinary works clearly reflect his intimate knowledge of and love for maritime vessels and the sea.Manet and the Sea is the first book to highlight the French master's beautiful and varied seascapes. Essays by leading scholars discuss how Manet completely overturned the established academic conventions of marine painting in France. His provocative approach was equal to that of his contemporary Gustave Courbet, and his bold and innovative techniques inspired many younger artists, including Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, James McNeill Whistler, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Essays on these and other artists place their seascapes in relation to Manet's pictures.This handsomely illustrated and designed book presents over one hundred paintings and drawings in full color. Anyone interested in the sea, maritime painting, nineteenth-century French painting, and particularly the role Manet played in the Impressionist revolution, will find this an essential book to own. ... Read more

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In 1874, the year of the first Impressionist exhibit, Manet showed his painting Gare Saint-Lazare at the Paris Salon. This book considers the enigmatic painting-exhibited as Le Chemin de fer (The Railway)- and the symbolic importance of the railroad in the work of Manet, Monet, Caillebotte, and other artists of the time. The book identifies the precise site of Manet`s picture and sheds light on the crucial question of plein air versus studio painting.Amazon.com Review
When Edouard Manet first exhibited his painting titled"Le Chemin de Fer" (the railway) at the Paris Salon in 1874,it was universally derided by critics.The "GareSaint-Lazare," as the painting has come to be known, depicts aseated woman holding a small dog and staring off the canvas, and ayoung girl with her back to the viewer regarding a railroad track,steam, and architectural details of a Paris city street just beyond animmense iron fence. It wasn't until long after the painting moved intoa private collection that the structures forming its background wereidentified as part of the iron bridge that spans the railway linesjust beyond the station and an exact rendition of the facade of theManet's studio. The "Gare Saint-Lazare" was Manet's firstmajor work after the Franco-Prussian War, and it marked a break withhis earlier, more pastoral subjects in favor of those exploring theburgeoning urbanization and modernization of the industrial age.

Manet, Monet, and the Gare Saint-Lazare, which was published toaccompany an exhibit of the same name at the Musée D'Orsay inParis and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1998, isexceptionally well conceived. With the "Gare Saint-Lazare"as a centerpiece, writer Juliet Wilson-Bareau launches into a surveyof the work of Claude Monet, who painted a group of canvases depictingthe same neighborhood, and Gustave Caillebotte, whose two mostimportant works portray the same area. She contrasts the artists'vantage points and finished pieces in order to compare their diverseperspectives of a similar scene and examines the symbolism of thesteam train as harbinger of a new age. The book includes finelyreproduced color images of the painters' work, albumen prints of thearea taken during the era in which they were painted, bird's-eye mapsof the station, and some contemporary photos of the area. It is a wellinformed and incisive assessment of both a seminal body of artwork andan important moment in Paris's cultural history. --JordanaMoskowitz ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fresh perspective, rich documentation, but scattered
In Paris of the 1860s, Baron Haussman decreed the Quartier de l'Europe. Centered around a vastly enlarged Saint-Lazare railroad station - the tracks of which were to run below a monumental bridge fed by six dramatically designed and expensively developed new streets - the neighborhood became a symbol of modernism. As such it attracted a palette of "progressive" painters: not only did Manet and Monet have studios there and produce great canvases inspired by its masses, perspectives, light, and air; so, too, did the academically trained essentialist Caillebotte, who supported his avant-garde friends' work with his own inherited wealth. This richly documented catalogue (for a 1998 exhibit at the Musée d'Orsay and the National Gallery of Washington) supplements an awkwardly organized narrative with maps, photographs, and reproductions that frequently (but not invariably) do justice to the great paintings. (Why, for instance, is Caillebotte's "Paris Street, Rainy Day" shown in monochrome?) The volume also introduces the reader to fine, minor impressionists like Norbert Goeneutte and a precursor of surrealism, Jean Béraud, who combined quasi-photographic effects with collage to suggest a world of dream. All in all, a useful contribution to the cultural study of art ... Read more

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In the winter of 1880 Edouard Manet, then 49, was dying. In the last months of his life he funnelled his waning energy into a series of remarkable still lifes - 16 small paintings of flowers - which are brought together in this book. An essay by Andrew Forge pays tribute to the artist's struggle and his legacy, and Robert Gordon's selections from Manet's letters add poignancy to this last glow of a brilliant artistic flame. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Spectacular end of life review
This book contains what I consider some of the most powerful "last works" of any impressionist painter.Splendid in the perfection of their simplicity, these last flowers speak to the mystery of beauty in the most ordinary and ephemeral of things...a vase of flowers sent in sympathy to a very ill man. They stand as a testament to the transforming power of the aesthetic experience---akin toa religious experience. I can only hope someday they are collected in an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago so I can see them in person.

The Last Flowers of Manet
Absolutely perfect for my "Deathbed Art" themed lecture. A lovely book.

A Beautiful Little Book
A wonderful yet small collection of reproductions of Manet's last works. A very great artist, at the end of his days, paints exquisite small works of flowers. What else could you want?

Manet's last works are simply perfect!
As an art student studying the techniques of the masters, this little book has been invaluable to me. This is for anyone who seriously wants to experience Manet's genius. His little florals leap off the page! The printing is good, too. Faithfully shows detail and tone well. While nothing replaces seeing these works in person, this book is one every artist should have.

Breathtaking Mastery
During the last months of 1882 Edouard Manet was gravely ill. This was to be the last year of his life.He no longer had the strengh for large ambitious work.With frequent rest periods, he had just completed "ABar at the Folies-Bergere."

Due to his ebbing energy he began topaint on a smaller scale, simple bouquets of flowers in a variety of glassvases.Often these were the flowers friends brought to the convalescingartist.

"The Last Flowers of Manet" is a little gem of a bookpresenting 16 of these elegant, magical paintings.There are etherealwhite lilac blossoms and slashes of pink peony petals shimmering beforerich, black backgrounds. There are roses and tulips in warm, goldenshades.

Just as Matisse in his last days could not make a false strokewhen creating his cutout compositions, so Manet brings total mastery tothese exquisite, soulful still lifes. ... Read more

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Rizzoli Art Classics presents Manet, the next installment in this successful art series. With authoritative text by renowned cultural commentators, this lavishly illustrated monograph is the perfect companion for art history's most passionate fans. The book includes commentary by famous art historians; a critical essay on the artist's life and art; descriptive captions; a timeline; a "Writings" section with excerpts from noted art historians and historical figures; a list of museums where the featured paintings can be found; and a concise bibliography with suggested further readings. ... Read more