Re-Ordering the Universe: Picasso and Anarchism, 1897-1914

Description

From Library Journal In this thorough, detailed reading of the impact of the war on Parisian art and artists, Silver (art, NYU) combines acute analyses of major works with a thorough grasp of popular and propaganda art. His study of work done during the war years is particularly informative about the milieu in which Matisse, Picasso, Gleizes, Severini, and others worked. On balance, the accumulation of facts does not quite explain the shift from Cubism in 1914 to Art Deco and Surrealism in the mid-1920s, but this well-written work offers much valuable original analysis of individual artists and works. It is thus an unfortunate economy that the sizes of the originals illustrated are not given. Recommended for advanced art history collections. - Jack Perry Brown, Ryerson & Burnham Libs., Art Inst . of Chicago Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review "[Patricia Leighten] produces a new kind of synthesis. Part social and political history, part patchwork of eyewitness accounts, it works over well-beaten ground and gets it to flower again. . . . Ms. Leighten carries us with her all the way from Barcelona between 1895 and 1904, with anarchism almost ubiquitous in the periodical press, to Paris on the eve of World War I, with Picasso larding his every cut-paper collage with loaded comment on the outrages of the day. . . . This is a most remarkable book, and one to which all future students of Picasso will be indebted. . . ."---John Russell, The New York Times Book Review "A successful effort to connect art to politics. . . . Necessary reading for any serious student of Picasso's work."---Gregory McNamee, The Bloomsbury Review "Anyone studying the history of Cubism and related movements should read [this book] to rectify the myth that Pablo Picasso and his coterie really believed that significance lies only in form."---George Woodcock, The New Leader