cover image Impressionism: Selections from Five American Museums

Impressionism: Selections from Five American Museums

Marc S. Gerstein. Hudson Hills Press, $40 (202pp) ISBN 978-1-55595-030-9

Featuring 85 full-page color plates, this jewel of an album showcases one of the most brilliant impressionist exhibitions ever mounted. The fine-tuned plates recreate the incandescent chromatics in a Degas pastel of dancers, or the sparkling streaks in a Mary Cassatt portrait. There are works by celebrated impressionists--Renoir, Manet, Pissarro, Degas, etc.--and less well-known figures such as Gustave Caillebotte and Berthe Morisot. The monograph embraces neo-impressionist work such as the country- and cityscapes of Paul Signac, as well as Van Gogh's windmills, Gauguin's South Seas paradise and Pierre Bonnard's symbolic transformations of the ordinary. Facing-page commentaries by art historian Gerstein illuminate historical and personal contexts as well as impressionist modes of perception and knowing. Five museums collaborated on this show that will travel among them: Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Mo.; Saint Louis Art Museum; and Toledo Museum of Art. Literary Guild selection. (Dec.)