Manet (Basic Art)

Manet (Basic Art)

<strong>A fresh look: Pivotal paintings of modernity</strong><br /><br />Lampooned during his lifetime for his style as much as his subject matter, French painter <strong>Édouard Manet</strong> (1832–1883) is now considered a crucial figure in the history of art, bridging the transition from Realism to Impressionism.<br /><br />Manet’s work combined a painterly technique with strikingly modern images of contemporary life, centered on the urban Paris experience. He recorded the <strong>city’s parks, bars, and cabarets, often delighting in the frisson of underground or provocative content.</strong> The Paris salon rejected his <em>Déjeuner sur l’herbe</em> with its juxtaposition of fully dressed men and a nude woman, while the steady gaze and unabashed pose of the prostitute <em><strong>Olympia,</strong></em> a very modern reworking of Titian’s <em>Venus of Urbino</em>, caused a society scandal.<br /><br />With rich illustration, this book introduces Manet’s work and his uniquely influential combination of Realism, Impressionism, and reworked Old Masters that would become <strong>paradigms of a brave new world for generations of modernists</strong> to come.<br /><br /><strong>About the series:</strong><br />Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features: <ul> <li> a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance <li> a concise biography <li> approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions</ul>