9780300062489

Your Satisfaction is Guaranteed:

• 30 Day Return Policy
• Bookseller Guarantee
• Privacy & Security Policy

This two-volume edition makes the most important of Diderot's art-critical texts available in English for the first time. His works are among the most provocative and engaging products of the French Enlightenment. Moreover, their ruminations on many issues of perennial interest (invention versus convention, nature versus culture, and technique versus imagination; the complex relations between economic reality and artistic achievement) give them a rare pertinence to current debates on the nature and function of representation. All the celebrated pieces are here: the rhapsodic dream meditation inspired by Fragonard's Coresus and Callierhoe; theincident-packed "excursion" through a set of landscapes by Joseph Vernet; the evocative consideration of the nature of ruins and historical nostalgia prompted by the first showing of works by Hubert Robert. But these famous passages can now be considered in their proper context, surrounded by meditations that are less well known but equally sparkling. The book also includes brief introductory texts andannotations by John Goodman that clarify the many references to contemporary Parisian culture, as well as an introduction by Thomas Crow that sets the texts in their historical and art-historical context.

"There are two reasons for regarding Diderot's art criticism as important. It has come, especially recently, to enjoy a very high reputation among later art critics and historians; but further it contains some of his most original and amazing writing, rivaling 'le Neveu de Rameau' and 'Le Reve d'Alembert, and indeed having a close connection with them. it was time, therefore--more than time--for it to be offered in English translation, and it is fair to say that the job could hardly have been done better than in the present Yale edition....John Goodman is an absolutely first-class translator and his notes...are nicely judged.

P. N. Furbank, Times Literary Supplement, 11/10/1995

"It is impossible to read the two volumes under review without being overcome by how much they have to offer us now. If we look for one word that sums up what is exemplary about Diderot's criticism, it is, perhaps paradoxically, its naturalness."

Richard Wolheim, New York Times Book Review, 12/07/1996

Diderot on Art: The Salon of 1765 and Notes on Painting: Search Results