The French Riviera as Eden and muse for modern artists.
The French Riviera has been a fabled resort for more than a century. As an enclave for the rich and famous, as well as a scenic tourist spot, it represents all that is beautiful and amusing. But for many of the twentieth century's finest painters, sculptors, photographers, and architects it has been much more: a place of potent myth and extraordinary creativity. Picasso, Matisse, Beckmann, Brancusi, Lartigue, Le Corbusier, and Eileen Gray, among many others, were inspired to create some of their greatest work on the Cote d'Azur.
This study examines the impact of modernity and the artistic imagination on an idyllic landscape. Touching on the issues of pleasure and escape, work and leisure, and desire and ecstasy, Making Paradise offers a fresh look at the Cote d'Azur and its historical significance as a site for modernist innovation from 1890 to the present. Beginning with the neoimpressionists, moving to the Fauves, and ending with such contemporary artists as David Hockney and Faith Ringgold, the book examines the splendid light and terrain of the southeastern coast of France and the region's influence on the artists who worked and played there. Like the book, the exhibition it accompanies features unexpected juxtapostitions: masterworks by Bonnard and Picasso with the photographs of Lartigue and Model; the villas of Le Corbusier, Gray, and Mallet-Stevens with designs for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo; and ceramics of Picasso with the found-object constructions of the Ecole de Nice of the early 1960s.
Copublished with the AXA Gallery, New York.
Exhibition information AXA Gallery New York, New York April 26-July 14, 2001

Making Paradise: Art, Modernity, and the Myth of the French Riviera

Arts & Photography

Silver, Kenneth E.

History & Criticism

The MIT Press

A beautifully illustrated celebration of the life, art, and style of “the Divine Sarah” Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) was an extraordinary performer, so much so that her name became synonymous with acting. Yet her importance extended beyond the world of theater—she was an icon of French nationalism, a target of both admiration and scorn, an artist and sculptor, and a trendsetting avatar of style. This fascinating book examines the many sides and talents of Bernhardt, from her beginnings at the Comédie Française through her international stardom. Wonderfully illustrated, the book features an unprecedented collection of images relating to Bernhardt’s life, including paintings, posters, photographs, costumes, jewelry, stage designs, self-portraits, and sculptures.
 Bernhardt orchestrated a brilliant sixty-year career as an actress and entrepreneur, becoming a revered patriotic figure in her native France and a beloved star in America, where she undertook nine successful tours. Along the way she sat for the most fashionable artists of her time, became the most photographed woman in the world, and attached her name to everything from hair curlers to liqueurs. This book brings the incredible Sarah Bernhardt to life for contemporary readers and highlights her historical significance and integral place in modern culture.
 Featured illustrations include:
• Art Nouveau posters by Alphonse Mucha depicting Bernhardt in her most famous roles
• Designer costumes, tunics, tiaras, and jewelry
• A human skull, a gift from Victor Hugo
• Portraits of the actress by Jean Cocteau, Félix Nadar, Andy Warhol, and others

Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama

The Jewish Museum

Ockman, Carol

Humor & Entertainment

Yale University Press

The art of portraiture reached a pinnacle of expressive achievement in early twentieth-century Paris. Liberated by the advent of photography, artists were able to re-imagine the nature of human portrayal, producing kinds of portraits―Fauve, Cubist, Dada, Surrealist, and Expressionist―unlike any seen before.
This remarkable book focuses on a rich variety of these portraits, presenting paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by such artists as Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Duchamp, Brancusi, Lipchitz, Gris, Rivera, Modigliani, Dubuffet, Laurencin, and Soutine. A major essay explores the fascinating network of personal and aesthetic relationships that existed at the time, as artists depicted themselves and their friends, collectors, critics, spouses, and romantic partners. There is also a formal and iconographic discussion of each featured work, as well as relevant biographical, cultural, and historical information.

Paris Portraits: Artists, Friends, and Lovers

Offering a look at the artist's life and multifaceted career, this volume contain's more than three hundred reproductions of Hockney's art--more than half in full-color--and seven essays by distinguished critics and artist friends

David Hockney: A retrospective

Knight, Christopher

Weschler, Lawrence

Hoy, Anne

Geldzahler, Henry

Kitaj, R.B.

Schiff, Gert.

Kitha, R.B.

History

Thames and Hudson

Well-illustrated, pioneering study of the the French vanguard response to the upheaval and political crises precipitated by the Great War by Kenneth Silver, a leading scholar of the period.

ESPRIT DE CORPS

Thames&Hudson

The English artist David Hockney is known world-wide for his colorful and classically composed images of sunshine, swimming pools, and the good life in California, for his prolific and innovative theater designs, and for his frank depictions of homosexual life and domesticity in which, long before the era of gay liberation, he unabashedly proclaimed his own sexual identity. Kenneth Silver, Professor of Art History at New York University, charts Hockney's multifaceted career from his early work of the 1960s, poised between abstraction and pop art's revival of figuration, to his most recent excursions into the high-tech world of computers and new print technologies.Also available in the Rizzoli Art Series:Willem de Kooning by David CateforisEdward Hopper by Karal Ann MarlingJasper Johns by Roberta BernsteinFrida Kahlo by Hayden HerreraRoy Lichtenstein by Diane WaldmanHenri Matisse by Roger BenjaminJoan Miró by Elizabeth HigdonGeorgia O'Keeffe by Barbara Buhler LynesPablo Picasso by Josephine WithersAndy Warhol by Jonathan Katzand many others.

David Hockney (Rizzoli Art Classics)

Rizzoli

Known for his bold forms, geometric contrasts, and enduring interest in the working class, French painter Fernand Leger has had a tremendous influence on cubism, constructivism, and the contemporary advertising poster. While inseparable from the legacies of other famed cubists, Leger truly defined his own aesthetic language through his depictions of machines and modern technology coupled with a vibrant use of color. With an introduction by renowned twentieth-century art scholar Kenneth E. Silver, this limited-edition volume, part of Assouline's Ultimate Collection, features a curated selection of his iconic pieces hand-glued to each page and displayed in exceptional fashion—for a lasting keepsake of Leger's extraordinary oeuvre.

Fernand Léger: A Survey of Iconic Work

Individual Artists

Assouline Publishing

Born near Minsk in White Russia, the painter Chaim Soutine (1894-1943) created his major works in France between the two World Wars. He is identified with the School of Paris, the group of artists, many of them foreign-born and Jewish, who lived and worked in the French capital between the wars. Known as a "painter's painter", Soutine worked with unreserved gesture and emotion, using exuberant colour, thinkly applied paint, and sweeping brushwork. "Chaim Soutine" is a comprehensive, ground-breaking book that rediscovers this important artist, providing an overview of his life, work and aesthetic influence, as well as his critical reception. Essays by leading scholars and curators assess Soutine's art from new vantage points, including the changing critical reception of his work in Paris between the wars, as well as in the US and France in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. The essays also examine the influence of Soutine's Jewish and French immigrant background on his work and reception, and introduce us to his important patrons and major collectors. These included Albert Barnes, the famous Philadelphia collector, who discovered Soutine's work in 1922-23 and purchased 52 of his paintings. The book features presentations and information never published before, including a photo-essay composed of rare photographs of the artist, newly discovered correspondence between Soutine and the French art historian Elie Faure, and the first radiographic analysis of the artist's work, which brings to light new evidence about Soutine's use of materials and his process of painting.

Chaim Soutine: An Expressionist in Paris

Kleeblatt, Norman L.

Prestel Publications & Jewish Museum of NY

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Books by Silver, Kenneth E.