The Painting of Modern Life

Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers - Revised Edition

Ranked #53 in Art History

The Paris of the 1860s and 1870s was supposedly a brand-new city, equipped with boulevards, cafés, parks, and suburban pleasure grounds—the birthplace of those habits of commerce and leisure that constitute "modern life." Questioning those who view Impressionism solely in terms of artistic technique, T. J. Clark describes the painting of Manet, Degas, Seurat, and others as an attempt to give form to that modernity and seek out its typical representatives—be they bar-maids, boaters, prostitutes, sightseers, or petits bourgeois lunching on the grass. The central question of The... more

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of The Painting of Modern Life from the world's leading experts.

Andrew Graham-Dixon It was very very hard to find a book that connected art with society in the way that Clark connected the art of the nineteenth century to the society in which it was produced. (Source)

Fred Inglis The second stage of my history of celebrity focuses on Paris at this time. A new kind of phenomenon is beginning to declare itself, which is the process whereby the fashion industry becomes industrialised and the whole novel notion of glamour attaches itself to people who are known and recognised. T J Clark wrote his wonderful book to study how the great painters of the day, people like Manet, Renoir and Redon, depicted the new, very appearance-conscious life of the city. The Impressionists took off at that time because people of the day aspired to public self-display and therefore, as we... (Source)


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