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(More customer reviews)Jean-Léon Gér?me (1824 - 1904) is a well-chosen title for this magnificent book about an artist who has survived a century of criticism for being far too academically inclined to get to the passion of painting. This hefty volume serves as the catalogue for a traveling exhibition of the works of Gér?me - paintings, drawings, sculptures - by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, an the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Having had the privilege of visiting the exhibition at the Getty provides this reader with a great deal of respect for this volume. Not only are the reproductions of the vast number of paintings reproduced in exquisite color and the sculptures and drawings and informational notations or gestational ideas for the works included, but each work in this exhibition and the book is carefully documented, not only as to time and place of creation, but a solid provenance of each work together with an analysis of the background of the painting and the effect the painting ha one those who saw it first, on subsequent critics and artists, and a classification as to which period in Gér?me's substantial history it occupies.
The writing for this book are excellent, with contributions not only by the three curators - Laurence des Cars, the chief curator and director of the France-Museum agency, Dominique de Font-Relaux of the Musée de Louvre, and Edouard Papet of the Musée d'Orsay - but further art history articles have been contributed by such fine writers as Guy Gogeval ('A Precise, Perverse Kind of Beauty'), 'Picturing Gér?me' by the three curators, Laurence des Cars ('Gér?me: Painter of Histories'), Scott C. Allan (Gér?me Before the Tribunal: The Painter's Early Reception'), Fran?ois de Vergnette ("History according to Gér?me), Pierre-Lin Renié ('Gér?me: Working in the Era of Industrial Reproduction'), Mary G. Morton ('Gér?me in the Gilded Cage'), Dominique de Font-Relaux ('Gér?me andPhotography: Accurate Depictions of an Imagined World') Sophie Marariou and Charlotte Maury ('The Paradox of Realism: Gér?me in the Orient'), édouard Papet ('Father Polychrome": The Sculpture of Jean-Léon Gér?me'), Dominique Pa?ni ('Painting the Moment Just Afterward, or, Gér?me as Film-maker'). The scope of approaches to the artist's work is thus introduced tot he potential buyer of this book. Yes there are many other books of images by this strange artist, but none approaches the complete survey of the gifts of one of the nineteenth century's great influences on art history.
For the student of art this book is indispensable, not only for the topic of the named artist, but for the wealth of information about art in the past two hundred years. For the art collector or art lover this volume unveils works never seen before as well as all of the 'behind the scenes' inspirations that lead to the extraordinary output of Jean-Léon Gér?me. Grady Harp, September 10
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An overview of Gérôme’s oeuvre from his sources of inspiration to his influences on others. The public perception of Jean-Léon Gérôme has changed greatly over the past decades. Long stigmatized as an emblem of sterile academicism, he is now considered one of the nineteenth century’s great image makers. This catalog highlights and analyzes his bountiful expression of a visual grammar that takes illusionist obsession to the limits of the bizarre and establishes a resonance with all visual arts, including prints, photography, and cinema. In particular, it will make it possible to propose new approaches to such diverse issues as Gérôme’s place in the French painting of his time, his theatrical conception of historical themes, his complex exoticism, his use of polychrome in sculpture, his role as a teacher, his relationship with historical models, how the figure of this artist galvanized the anti-academy clash at the end of the nineteenth century, and lastly, the singular American destiny of his works. The catalog sets out to explore, beyond the immediate seductive qualities and accessibility of Gérôme’s oeuvre, its double identity, both erudite and popular, which now renders it so precious to art historians and to the general public.
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