A revelatory, fast-paced account of the most exciting, frenzied, and revolutionary decade in art history—1905 to the dawn of World War I in 1914—and the avant-garde artists who indelibly changed our visual landscapeModern begins on a specific day—March 22, 1905—at a specific place: the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, where works of art we recognize as modern were first exhibited. Drawing on his forty five-year fine art career, author Philip Hook illuminat...

This "expert and elegantly written" book reveals how dealers have been a major force in art history from the Renaissance to the avant garde ( The Guardian, UK).Philip Hook's riveting narrative takes us from the early days of art dealing in Antwerp, where paintings were sold by weight, to the unassailable hauteur of contemporary galleries in New York, London, Paris, and beyond. Along the way, we meet a surprisingly wide-ranging cast of characters—from tailor...

Philip Hook returns to fiction in this collection of short stories. Many are set in the art world, of which the author has deep inside knowledge. Others are about cricket, football, war, espionage and marriage. Some are funny, some are moving, some are surreal. All of them are compulsive reading.

In 1892 Degas' painting In the Café was sold for a mere 180 guineas at auction, with the public hissing as the hammer fell. Less than a century later another Impressionist work, Renoir's Moulin de la Galette, sold at Sotheby's for $78 million, accompanied by enthusiastic applause. In this history-cum-memoir Philip Hook, Senior Director of Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art department, examines the public's change of heart toward Impressionism. Starting with its shocking novelty and con...

Now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, Johannes Vermeer specialised in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life in his home city of Delft. The artist’s reputation fell into obscurity after his death and it was not until the 19th century that his work was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him. Since that time, Vermeer’s reputation has continued to grow, recogni...

Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic Sebastian Smee tells the fascinating story of four pairs of artists—Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning, Freud and Bacon—whose fraught, competitive friendships spurred them to new creative heights.Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history. The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy,...

Coco Chanel, without question probably the most famous fashion designer of all time, was named by Time magazine one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Her life was filled with trauma, romance, intrigue, and scandal, but her business acumen and groundbreaking talent (along with funding by her paramours) took her far beyond her humble beginnings. Chanel understood how to get what she wanted from life and never hesitated to pursue the grandest of visions. Her designs brok...

The name Chanel brings immediately to mind the signature scent of No. 5 and the understated but sophisticated glamour of a simple black dress and pearls. But to consider Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (1883–1971) as simply a fashion designer fails to capture her social and cultural significance. As Linda Simon reveals in this biography, Chanel was an iconoclastic entrepreneur who rebelled against and manipulated gender expectations of her time. With her menswear-inspired designs, her loose jersey...

The innovative works of the Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne laid the foundations of a new and radically different form of art in the twentieth century. Challenging the conventional values of art in his time, Cézanne’s insistence on personal expression and the integrity of the painting itself, regardless of subject matter, have since earned him universal praise among his fellow artists, with Matisse and Picasso calling him "the father of us all." Delphi’s Masters of Art Se...

For a couple of decades before World War II, a group of immigrant painters and sculptors, including Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine and Jules Pascin dominated the new art scene of Montparnasse in Paris. Art critics gave them the name "the School of Paris" to set them apart from the French-born (and less talented) young artists of the period. Modigliani and Chagall eventually attained enormous worldwide popularity, but in those earlier days most School of Paris painters looke...

According to Vasari, the young Michelangelo often borrowed drawings of past masters, which he copied, returning his imitations to the owners and keeping originals. Half a millennium later, Andy Warhol made a game of "forging" the Mona Lisa, questioning the entire concept of originality. Forged explores art forgery from ancient times to the present. In chapters combining lively biography with insightful art criticism, Jonathon Keats profiles individual art forgers and connects thei...

Using the tools of the "new" art history (feminism, Marxism, social context, etc.) An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Art offers a richly textured, yet clear and logical, introduction to nineteenth-century art and culture. This textbook will provide readers with a basic historical framework of the period and the critical tools for interpreting and situating new and unfamiliar works of art.Michelle Facos goes beyond existing histories of nineteenth-century art, which oft...