The Gateway to Modern Art

How did Monet really paint his series? What influence did the writings of Kant, Goethe, and Rousseau, or the art criticism of Baudelaire and Zola, have on nineteenth-century artists? Did you know that Renoir also wrote art theory? How did women artists, such as Morisot and Cassatt, struggle against social barriers? How were the lives of the artists expressed in their works?

This book answers these questions and much more about the art of the nineteenth century, the cradle of modern art, a century rich in innovations both in art theory, philosophy and in the ideas of writers with whom the artists held a fruitful dialogue. By means of these theories, the author analyzes the principles of the three main movements that developed simultaneously at the beginning of the century: the idealism that ruled the Neo-Classical school and is found in the paintings of David and Ingres; the subjectivism of Romanticism that is revealed in the landscapes of Friedrich and Turner, in the highly expressive works of Goya and Delacroix and in the sculpture of Rodin; and Naturalism's interest in present-day life that is displayed in the landscapes of Constable and Corot and in the figure paintings of Millet and Courbet. This last movement was developed by Manet, Degas, Monet, and Renoir into Impressionism in the second half of the century. The book concludes with an analysis of the many different styles that were current at the end of the century in the art of Seurat, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Redon, and Munch.

The texts in the book illuminate the art works that were the gateway to modern art in a new light. These texts are translated into Hebrew – for the most part for the first time – while conserving the writing style of each author. Each chapter is accompanied by an introduction and explanatory footnotes.

A book for artists, lovers of art, teachers, and students.