Manets Silence and the Poetics of Bouquets - Softcover

James Henry Rubin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0948462566 ISBN 13: 9780948462566

Publisher: Consortium Book Sales, 1994

Synopsis

A sense of stillness and silence pervades Manet's works, whose flattened, sometimes fragmented figures appear to exist absentmindedly in a world entirely lacking speech. It is this silence that James Rubin explores in a essay that shows Manet as we see him - naturally, in pictures that articulate their own purely visual terms. Manet's figural works, whether the early bohemian subjects or the elusive portraits and modern-life themes of the later 1860s and 1870s, depend on visual exchanges and confrontations, or patterns of gazes, not on narrative. The "aesthetics of silence" to be found in these works is poetically embodied in the displays of evocative flower-studies and other still-lifes that Manet worked at throughout his career. Incorporating insights into Manet's achievement, and into certain writings of three literary associates - Baudelaire, Zola and Stephane Mallarme - the book sets out to explain why Manet's paintings continue to fascinate and elude us more than a century after his death.

About this title

About the Author:

James H. Rubin is Professor of Art History, State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Review:

A densely argued investigation of Manet's work, seeking to reevaluate 19th/20th-century and contemporary reception of the artist's oeuvre. The influence and criticism of Baudelaire, Zola and Mallarmé are assessed...The author considers literary and semiotic readings of art in order to frame the discussion with new ideas...The final chapter raises provocative questions regarding the notion of Realism's existence and purpose. (Art Book Review Quarterly)

Rubin explicates the art of Manet with the visual acuity and linguistic elegance of the best "connoisseur" of art history. (Choice)

About this edition

• Publisher: Consortium Book Sales
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0948462566
• ISBN 13: 9780948462566
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1