From Millet To Leger Essays In Social Art History

A compilation of Herbert's articles, published between 1960 and the mid-1990s, this book offers a valuable survey of the social inclinations of modernists and their 19th-century forebears. Consciously eschewing postmodern theorizing, Herbert (humanities, emeritus, Mount Holyoke; Seurat: Drawings and Paintings) carefully reconstructs each era's political climate and approaches paintings with careful attention to how period viewers would have understood them. From a lucid explanation of Primitivism to a well-plotted account of the Machine Aesthetic and its gendered implications, Herbert traces the essential issues of modern art history. Along the way, he determines the social import of an emphasis on decorative expression in the works of the Impressionists, examines veiled Socialist sympathies in Courbet's portraits, and persuasively repositions L ger from presumed abstract formalist to social realist. While he focuses primarily on French Modernism, Herbert provides ample discourse on the impact of Socialist artistic developments in other nations, such as Russia, Switzerland, and Germany. Collectively, his essays effectively capture the cyclic rhythms of intellectual patricide, the socially and politically motivated rolls and swells of aesthetics that drive culture ever forward.