French Modernisms
French Modernisms
$120.00
USDThis book examines the history of modern art in France from 1935 to 1970, demonstrating the close link between art and politics in this period. In essays focusing on key events in the exhibition and criticism of modern art, Michèle Cone provides a broader context for the racism and xenophobia that characterize Vichy-era France. Her analyses demonstrate that art critics, artists, and even the state attempted to exclude the Other - Jewish artists in the years leading up to and including World War II, American artists in the postwar period - in an effort to safeguard the integrity of indigenous traditions. Cone argues that the decline of French art in the second half of the century was caused, not by the invasion of the Abstract Expressionists and other foreign artists, but by the Parisian art establishment itself, which continued to promote national identity and tradition, the dominant values of the Vichy period.
- Written in accessible, nontechnical language
- Interdisciplinary focus, especially in its inclusion of France's political leaders and complex history between 1937–68
- Provides an answer to the question, 'Why did French art decline in the second half of the twentieth century?'
Reviews & endorsements
"...an thoughtful, engaging study... Cone's nonsensationalist tone makes her observations seem all the more startling, as we see not only venality in action but also naivete, self-interest, and survival as motivators. [...] She ...shows how the country's self-protective instincts and phobia towards outside influences have led to provincialism and marginalization." ARTNews
Product details
March 2001Hardback
9780521783507
236 pages
254 × 178 × 14 mm
0.63kg
35 b/w illus.
Available
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Table of Contents
- Introduction: art, nationality and national tradition: the case of France from 1937 to 1968
- 1. Collaboration foretold: French art of the present in Hitler's Berlin
- 2. Decadence and renewal in the decorative arts under Vichy
- 3. Vampires, viruses, and Lucien Rebatet: antisemitic art criticism during Vichy
- 4. Tricolor painting in Vichy France
- 5. Jean Paulhan and his artist friends
- 6. The Picasso album: a 1943 landmark of artistic resistance
- 7. Wartime guilt: French furniture of the 1940s
- 8. The mature Richier, the young César: expressionist confluences in French postwar sculpture
- 9. Pierre restany, the French fifties and the Americanization of the everyday
- Epilogue
- Hitler equals de Gaulle in a May '68 poster.
