Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist Details
From the Publisher This handsome volume offers new insight into one of the most engaging personalitites of the Impressionist Movement. Read more About the Author Kirk Varnedoe is Chief Curator, Painting and Sculpture, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Read more
Reviews
This is going to be one of the strangest complaints you'll ever read but if you ever get a copy of this book, you'll understand."Gustave Caillebotte, Urban Impressionist" has too much information. Don't get me wrong--a lot of it is fascinating in and of itself, and is well written. But should a person who wants to get a picture of an artist's oeuvre have to wade through pages and pages of history just to get the context behind a painting? No exaggeration, but there's an entire chapter here that talks about the urban planning of modern day Paris, just to get the readers to understand two famous Caillebotte paintings. This background could've easily been condensed to a page or two. There was no need to write pages and pages about it just to explain that Caillebotte was capturing the beauty of all the new streets and boulevards of a newly renovated Paris. Just to show you how OCD the book is, it even went so far as to include pictures of Paris in the process of construction.Again, that sounds like a strange complaint. It seems as if there can be no such thing as too much information. But too much information can wind up overwhelming a reader and make it difficult to get a better grasp on the subject being talked about. With other bios on artists, I can easily remember certain details about them and their work. With this book, I wound up remembering more about the history behind the look of modern day Paris than I did anything about Caillebotte.Don't get me wrong. This is a very scholarly, well written book but it's excessive in the amount of detail, sometimes to the detriment of the subject matter.
