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Loading... The Russian Impressionistsby Mikhail Guerman
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Mikhail Guerman traces the converging lines between Russian and French art in this immensely fertile period. 1863 was the year in which Manet's ""Dejeuner sur l'herbe"" caused a scandal at the Salon d'Automne, and in which the Itinerants group was formed in Russia, to take art to the people and paint the outdoors. 1874 saw the Independent's exhibition at Nadar's art gallery in Paris, and was the year in which Payel Tretiakov built his art gallery. In 1907 Fauves and Nabis were exhibited in Russia for the first time, whilst Kuznetsov, Larionov and Goncharova radicalised painting and graphics. In the period from 1910 to 1914 there is a second transferral of ideas from French Cubism and Italian Futurism to the Blue Rose movement, which, in its turn, influences the forward movements in the West. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)759.054The arts Painting History, geographic treatment, biography History 1800-1899 ImpressionismLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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While some of the images are impressive, the total package leaves much to be desired. The text is set in a fairly narrow sans face, not a good choice for comfortable reading, it is also comparatively large, again too large for comfortable close reading, and frequently it appears against a grey background; little good to be found there.
While the quality of photography and reproduction is sometimes very good, revealing at times the textures of the paint and the brush work, it is not consistent; sometimes the image is out of focus, this usually occurs where the close up has been enlarged too much and so render useless.
But perhaps the most irritating aspect of the book is the overall layout; it is quite simply far too busy. There are too many page permutations: double page bleed illustrations, text with running illustrations, text wrapped around illustrations, text wrapped around cut-out illustrations; I could go on but must mention one more and perhaps the most infuriating: the double page bleed image with a single column of text splitting the image so that part of it is moved across the page. As there is little relationship between the text and illustrations, I cannot see any reason for this strange integration. The overall impression is confusing and looks cheap, but more significantly it detracts from the paintings. Altogether a great shame for there is some beautiful work reproduced here. How much easier on the eye it would have been if the paintings had been assembled in a consistent layout separate from the text. ( )