After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art

I saw this exhibtion at the national gallery, it was completely mesmerising. The book is great and covers everything in the show. One thing you do realise however is that the digital printing can’t get across the true colours and light of the paintings. When you stand in front of the impressionist works they have another layer of subtle colour shift and textures catching the light that you just cannot reproduce in a book. That said great book and reference.

The catalog of the National Gallery exhibition provides a good general overview of painting from the last impressionist exhibition (1886) to 1914 )WW1. The parts relating to cities other than Paris become increasingly slim and a little forced. Overall well worth reading.

Well written, the reader begins to understand how one artist's lack of skill or mistake becomes another artist's greatest success, how a dribble of paint on the floor made Jackson Pollock widely known for his "drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface. Marcel Duchamp said, "I do not believe in art. I only believe in the Artist. The groundbreaking artists of the Impressionism period made it possible for the artists who came after them to have the freedom to explore new ways and creative ideas on what art is.