Author: Simon Kelly
Publisher: Prestel
ISBN: 9783791356211
Category : Hats
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Filled with beautiful works by Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and other Impressionist painters, this richly illustrated book showcases artistic portrayals of France's millinery trade during the Belle Époque. Filled with beautiful works by Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and other Impressionist painters, this richly illustrated book showcases artistic portrayals of France's millinery trade during the Belle Époque. Though best known for his depictions of dancers and bathers, Edgar Degas repeatedly returned to the subject of millinery over the course of three decades. In masterpieces such as The Millinery Shop (1879-86) and The Milliners (ca. 1898), he captured scenes of milliners fashioning and women wearing elaborate, colorful hats. Featuring sumptuous paintings, pastels, and preparatory drawings by Degas, Cassatt, Manet, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec, among others, this generously illustrated book surveys the millinery industry of 19th-century Paris. Peppered throughout with photographs, posters, and prints of French hats, this book includes essays that explore Degas's particular interest in the millinery trade; the tension between modern fashion and reverence for history and the grand art-historical tradition; a chronicle of Parisian milliners from Caroline Reboux to Coco Chanel; and examples of how the millinery trade is depicted in literature. Brilliantly linking together the worlds of industry, art, and fashion, this groundbreaking book examines the fundamental role of hats and hat-makers in 19th-century culture.
Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade
Author: Simon Kelly
Publisher: Prestel
ISBN: 9783791356211
Category : Hats
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Filled with beautiful works by Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and other Impressionist painters, this richly illustrated book showcases artistic portrayals of France's millinery trade during the Belle Époque. Filled with beautiful works by Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and other Impressionist painters, this richly illustrated book showcases artistic portrayals of France's millinery trade during the Belle Époque. Though best known for his depictions of dancers and bathers, Edgar Degas repeatedly returned to the subject of millinery over the course of three decades. In masterpieces such as The Millinery Shop (1879-86) and The Milliners (ca. 1898), he captured scenes of milliners fashioning and women wearing elaborate, colorful hats. Featuring sumptuous paintings, pastels, and preparatory drawings by Degas, Cassatt, Manet, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec, among others, this generously illustrated book surveys the millinery industry of 19th-century Paris. Peppered throughout with photographs, posters, and prints of French hats, this book includes essays that explore Degas's particular interest in the millinery trade; the tension between modern fashion and reverence for history and the grand art-historical tradition; a chronicle of Parisian milliners from Caroline Reboux to Coco Chanel; and examples of how the millinery trade is depicted in literature. Brilliantly linking together the worlds of industry, art, and fashion, this groundbreaking book examines the fundamental role of hats and hat-makers in 19th-century culture.
Publisher: Prestel
ISBN: 9783791356211
Category : Hats
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Filled with beautiful works by Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and other Impressionist painters, this richly illustrated book showcases artistic portrayals of France's millinery trade during the Belle Époque. Filled with beautiful works by Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and other Impressionist painters, this richly illustrated book showcases artistic portrayals of France's millinery trade during the Belle Époque. Though best known for his depictions of dancers and bathers, Edgar Degas repeatedly returned to the subject of millinery over the course of three decades. In masterpieces such as The Millinery Shop (1879-86) and The Milliners (ca. 1898), he captured scenes of milliners fashioning and women wearing elaborate, colorful hats. Featuring sumptuous paintings, pastels, and preparatory drawings by Degas, Cassatt, Manet, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec, among others, this generously illustrated book surveys the millinery industry of 19th-century Paris. Peppered throughout with photographs, posters, and prints of French hats, this book includes essays that explore Degas's particular interest in the millinery trade; the tension between modern fashion and reverence for history and the grand art-historical tradition; a chronicle of Parisian milliners from Caroline Reboux to Coco Chanel; and examples of how the millinery trade is depicted in literature. Brilliantly linking together the worlds of industry, art, and fashion, this groundbreaking book examines the fundamental role of hats and hat-makers in 19th-century culture.
A Companion to Impressionism
Author: André Dombrowski
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119373891
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 644
Book Description
The 21st century's first major academic reassessment of Impressionism, providing a new generation of scholars with a comprehensive view of critical conversations Presenting an expansive view of the study of Impressionism, this extraordinary volume breaks new thematic ground while also reconsidering established questions surrounding the definition, chronology, and membership of the Impressionist movement. In 34 original essays from established and emerging scholars, this collection considers a diverse range of developing topics and offers new critical approaches to the interpretation of Impressionist art. Focusing on the 1860s to 1890s, this Companion explores artists who are well-represented in Impressionist studies, including Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Cassatt, as well as Morisot, Caillebotte, Bazille, and other significant yet lesser-known artists. The essays cover a wide variety of methodologies in addressing such topics as Impressionism's global predominance at the turn of the 20th century, the relationship between Impressionism and the emergence of new media, the materials and techniques of the Impressionists, and the movement's exhibition and reception history. Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series, this important new addition to scholarship in this field: Reevaluates the origins, chronology, and critical reception of French Impressionism Discusses Impressionism's account of modern identity in the contexts of race, nationality, gender, and sexuality Explores the global reach and influence of Impressionism in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, North Africa, and the Americas Considers Impressionism's relationship to the emergence of film and photography in the 19th century Considers Impressionism's representation of the private sphere as compared to its depictions of public issues such as empire, finance, and environmental change Addresses the Impressionist market and clientele, period criticism, and exhibition displays from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century Features original essays by academics, curators, and conservators from around the world, including those from France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Turkey, and Argentina The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Impressionism is an invaluable text for students and academics studying Impressionism and late 19th century European art, Post-Impressionism, modern art, and modern French cultural history.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119373891
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 644
Book Description
The 21st century's first major academic reassessment of Impressionism, providing a new generation of scholars with a comprehensive view of critical conversations Presenting an expansive view of the study of Impressionism, this extraordinary volume breaks new thematic ground while also reconsidering established questions surrounding the definition, chronology, and membership of the Impressionist movement. In 34 original essays from established and emerging scholars, this collection considers a diverse range of developing topics and offers new critical approaches to the interpretation of Impressionist art. Focusing on the 1860s to 1890s, this Companion explores artists who are well-represented in Impressionist studies, including Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Cassatt, as well as Morisot, Caillebotte, Bazille, and other significant yet lesser-known artists. The essays cover a wide variety of methodologies in addressing such topics as Impressionism's global predominance at the turn of the 20th century, the relationship between Impressionism and the emergence of new media, the materials and techniques of the Impressionists, and the movement's exhibition and reception history. Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series, this important new addition to scholarship in this field: Reevaluates the origins, chronology, and critical reception of French Impressionism Discusses Impressionism's account of modern identity in the contexts of race, nationality, gender, and sexuality Explores the global reach and influence of Impressionism in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, North Africa, and the Americas Considers Impressionism's relationship to the emergence of film and photography in the 19th century Considers Impressionism's representation of the private sphere as compared to its depictions of public issues such as empire, finance, and environmental change Addresses the Impressionist market and clientele, period criticism, and exhibition displays from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century Features original essays by academics, curators, and conservators from around the world, including those from France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Turkey, and Argentina The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Impressionism is an invaluable text for students and academics studying Impressionism and late 19th century European art, Post-Impressionism, modern art, and modern French cultural history.
Color in the Age of Impressionism
Author: Laura Anne Kalba
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271079789
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 713
Book Description
This study analyzes the impact of color-making technologies on the visual culture of nineteenth-century France, from the early commercialization of synthetic dyes to the Lumière brothers’ perfection of the autochrome color photography process. Focusing on Impressionist art, Laura Anne Kalba examines the importance of dyes produced in the second half of the nineteenth century to the vision of artists such as Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet. The proliferation of vibrant new colors in France during this time challenged popular understandings of realism, abstraction, and fantasy in the realms of fine art and popular culture. More than simply adding a touch of spectacle to everyday life, Kalba shows, these bright, varied colors came to define the development of a consumer culture increasingly based on the sensual appeal of color. Impressionism—emerging at a time when inexpensively produced color functioned as one of the principal means by and through which people understood modes of visual perception and signification—mirrored and mediated this change, shaping the ways in which people made sense of both modern life and modern art. Demonstrating the central importance of color history and technologies to the study of visuality, Color in the Age of Impressionism adds a dynamic new layer to our understanding of visual and material culture.
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271079789
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 713
Book Description
This study analyzes the impact of color-making technologies on the visual culture of nineteenth-century France, from the early commercialization of synthetic dyes to the Lumière brothers’ perfection of the autochrome color photography process. Focusing on Impressionist art, Laura Anne Kalba examines the importance of dyes produced in the second half of the nineteenth century to the vision of artists such as Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet. The proliferation of vibrant new colors in France during this time challenged popular understandings of realism, abstraction, and fantasy in the realms of fine art and popular culture. More than simply adding a touch of spectacle to everyday life, Kalba shows, these bright, varied colors came to define the development of a consumer culture increasingly based on the sensual appeal of color. Impressionism—emerging at a time when inexpensively produced color functioned as one of the principal means by and through which people understood modes of visual perception and signification—mirrored and mediated this change, shaping the ways in which people made sense of both modern life and modern art. Demonstrating the central importance of color history and technologies to the study of visuality, Color in the Age of Impressionism adds a dynamic new layer to our understanding of visual and material culture.
Degas and the Nude
Author: George T. M. Shackelford
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500093627
Category : Nude in art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The nude figure was critical to the art of Edgar Degas throughout his life, and yet his expansive body of work on this subject has been overshadowed by his celebrated portraits and dancers. Degas and the Nude is the first book in a generation to explore the artist's treatment of the nude from his early years in the 1850s and 1860s, through his triumphs in the 1880s and 1890s, all the way to his last decades, when the theme dominated his artistic production in all media. With essays by leading critics, the book aims to provide a new interpretation of Degas's evolving conception of the nude and to situate it in the subject's broader context among his peers in 19th-century France. Among the scores of reproductions is one of the most important of Degas's early paintings, Scene of War in the Middle Ages, which exerted a lifelong influence on the artist's treatment of the female nude and includes poses poses repeated throughout his career. Also included are monotypes of the late 1870s, which illustrate Degas's most explicitly sexual depictions of women in Parisian brothels, and pictures portraying the daily life of women wherever they resided. Together these iterations range over more than a half-century of virtuoso achievement and manifest a groundbreaking look at the evolution of this master artist.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500093627
Category : Nude in art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The nude figure was critical to the art of Edgar Degas throughout his life, and yet his expansive body of work on this subject has been overshadowed by his celebrated portraits and dancers. Degas and the Nude is the first book in a generation to explore the artist's treatment of the nude from his early years in the 1850s and 1860s, through his triumphs in the 1880s and 1890s, all the way to his last decades, when the theme dominated his artistic production in all media. With essays by leading critics, the book aims to provide a new interpretation of Degas's evolving conception of the nude and to situate it in the subject's broader context among his peers in 19th-century France. Among the scores of reproductions is one of the most important of Degas's early paintings, Scene of War in the Middle Ages, which exerted a lifelong influence on the artist's treatment of the female nude and includes poses poses repeated throughout his career. Also included are monotypes of the late 1870s, which illustrate Degas's most explicitly sexual depictions of women in Parisian brothels, and pictures portraying the daily life of women wherever they resided. Together these iterations range over more than a half-century of virtuoso achievement and manifest a groundbreaking look at the evolution of this master artist.
Spectacle and Leisure in Paris
Author: Elizabeth C. Childs
Publisher: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
ISBN: 9780936316437
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, held February 10 to May 21, 2017, at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis.
Publisher: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
ISBN: 9780936316437
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, held February 10 to May 21, 2017, at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis.
Seurat's Circus Sideshow
Author: Richard Thomson
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN: 1588396150
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
Georges Seurat (1859–1891) created just six major figure paintings during his lifetime, one of which, the alluring Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque), has remained the most challenging to interpret since it first intrigued viewers at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants in Paris. Unlike Seurat’s earlier sunlit scenes, Circus Sideshow presents a nighttime tableau depicting a parade—a street show enticing passersby to purchase tickets. With its geometrically precise composition, muted colors, and elements of abstraction, the painting stands apart as a masterpiece of Neo-Impressionism and heralds Seurat’s subsequent depictions of popular entertainments. This book, the first comprehensive study of Circus Sideshow, situates the painting in the context of nineteenth-century Paris and of the many social changes France was undergoing. Renowned art historian Richard Thomson illuminates the roles of caricature, naturalist and avant-garde painting, and circus advertising; examines Seurat’s use of contemporary aesthetic theory; and discusses how artists ranging from Rouault to Picasso mined the sideshow theme into the twentieth century. Illustrated with Seurat’s related drawings, works by other artists, and period posters and broadsides, Seurat’s Circus Sideshow delves into the history of traveling circuses and seasonal fairs in France, exploring the ongoing appeal of this traditional form of popular entertainment through the fin de siècle. Two additional essays describe the painting’s enthusiastic reception in New York upon its 1929 debut and present the results of a fresh technical examination of the canvas, making this volume the definitive resource on one of Seurat’s most captivating works.
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN: 1588396150
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
Georges Seurat (1859–1891) created just six major figure paintings during his lifetime, one of which, the alluring Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque), has remained the most challenging to interpret since it first intrigued viewers at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants in Paris. Unlike Seurat’s earlier sunlit scenes, Circus Sideshow presents a nighttime tableau depicting a parade—a street show enticing passersby to purchase tickets. With its geometrically precise composition, muted colors, and elements of abstraction, the painting stands apart as a masterpiece of Neo-Impressionism and heralds Seurat’s subsequent depictions of popular entertainments. This book, the first comprehensive study of Circus Sideshow, situates the painting in the context of nineteenth-century Paris and of the many social changes France was undergoing. Renowned art historian Richard Thomson illuminates the roles of caricature, naturalist and avant-garde painting, and circus advertising; examines Seurat’s use of contemporary aesthetic theory; and discusses how artists ranging from Rouault to Picasso mined the sideshow theme into the twentieth century. Illustrated with Seurat’s related drawings, works by other artists, and period posters and broadsides, Seurat’s Circus Sideshow delves into the history of traveling circuses and seasonal fairs in France, exploring the ongoing appeal of this traditional form of popular entertainment through the fin de siècle. Two additional essays describe the painting’s enthusiastic reception in New York upon its 1929 debut and present the results of a fresh technical examination of the canvas, making this volume the definitive resource on one of Seurat’s most captivating works.
Painted Love
Author: Hollis Clayson
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 0892367296
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
In this engrossing book, Hollis Clayson provides the first description and analysis of French artistic interest in women prostitutes, examining how the subject was treated in the art of the 1870s and 1880s by such avant-garde painters as Cézanne, Degas, Manet, and Renoir, as well as by the academic and low-brow painters who were their contemporaries. Clayson not only illuminates the imagery of prostitution-with its contradictory connotations of disgust and fascination-but also tackles the issues and problems relevant to women and men in a patriarchal society. She discusses the conspicuous sexual commerce during this era and the resulting public panic about the deterioration of social life and civilized mores. She describes the system that evolved out of regulating prostitutes and the subsequent rise of clandestine prostitutes who escaped police regulation and who were condemned both for blurring social boundaries and for spreading sexual licentiousness among their moral and social superiors. Clayson argues that the subject of covert prostitution was especially attractive to vanguard painters because it exemplified the commercialization and the ambiguity of modern life.
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 0892367296
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
In this engrossing book, Hollis Clayson provides the first description and analysis of French artistic interest in women prostitutes, examining how the subject was treated in the art of the 1870s and 1880s by such avant-garde painters as Cézanne, Degas, Manet, and Renoir, as well as by the academic and low-brow painters who were their contemporaries. Clayson not only illuminates the imagery of prostitution-with its contradictory connotations of disgust and fascination-but also tackles the issues and problems relevant to women and men in a patriarchal society. She discusses the conspicuous sexual commerce during this era and the resulting public panic about the deterioration of social life and civilized mores. She describes the system that evolved out of regulating prostitutes and the subsequent rise of clandestine prostitutes who escaped police regulation and who were condemned both for blurring social boundaries and for spreading sexual licentiousness among their moral and social superiors. Clayson argues that the subject of covert prostitution was especially attractive to vanguard painters because it exemplified the commercialization and the ambiguity of modern life.
Camille Pissarro
Author: Christophe Duvivier
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 3791378279
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This new consideration of Pissarro’s work focuses on his strengths as a unifier and champion of other painters, as well as his innovative approach to the Impressionist movement and beyond. As one of the founding figures of Impressionism, Camille Pissarro exerted considerable influence over the movement’s other members, such as Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt. This publication focuses on Pissarro’s collaborations with these and other artists. It also celebrates the avant-garde quality of his painting, particularly in his contributions to Neo-Impressionism. Focusing on his role in the revolutionary Impressionist movement of the 1870s, the book traces Pissarro’s work in dialog with his fellow artists, particularly Cezanne and Gauguin, and also reveals his influence on works by Alfred Sisley, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac and others. In addition to pages of exquisite reproductions of works by Pissarro and his contemporaries, this volume features illuminating essays about his influences on Van Gogh, his approach to the female figure, and the role of synthesis among the early Impressionists. Readers will come away with a new understanding of how Pissarro’s unique talent for collaboration and unity was vital to the development of French painting in the late 19th century.
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 3791378279
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This new consideration of Pissarro’s work focuses on his strengths as a unifier and champion of other painters, as well as his innovative approach to the Impressionist movement and beyond. As one of the founding figures of Impressionism, Camille Pissarro exerted considerable influence over the movement’s other members, such as Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt. This publication focuses on Pissarro’s collaborations with these and other artists. It also celebrates the avant-garde quality of his painting, particularly in his contributions to Neo-Impressionism. Focusing on his role in the revolutionary Impressionist movement of the 1870s, the book traces Pissarro’s work in dialog with his fellow artists, particularly Cezanne and Gauguin, and also reveals his influence on works by Alfred Sisley, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac and others. In addition to pages of exquisite reproductions of works by Pissarro and his contemporaries, this volume features illuminating essays about his influences on Van Gogh, his approach to the female figure, and the role of synthesis among the early Impressionists. Readers will come away with a new understanding of how Pissarro’s unique talent for collaboration and unity was vital to the development of French painting in the late 19th century.
Fashion in Impressionist Paris
Author: Debra N. Mancoff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781858945828
Category : Clothing and dress in art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Even before the advent of haute couture, Paris was a great centre of fashion. During the second half of the nineteenth century, when the capital was transformed by an ambitious urban plan, its residents responded in kind, wearing styles as polished and modern as the city itself in order to participate in the exciting new social scene. Featuring famed paintings by such Impressionist masters as Degas, Cassatt, Manet, Monet and Morisot, this delightful book revisits the world of Parisian fashion through the eyes of first-hand observers. Thematic chapters present a gallery-like ensemble of paintings that follow in the footsteps of stylish Parisians as they stroll in the parks and boulevards, meet friends at cafés, take in the theatre, relax at home and go on holiday. In an extended narrative-style caption to accompany each image, fashion and art historian Debra N. Mancoff offers a detailed discussion of what men and women wore and how their dress defined them. To complete the picture, illustrated interludes, providing glimpses into dressmaking, corsetry and millinery, the origins of couture and the rise of the department store, reveal how Paris became the fashion capital of the world.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781858945828
Category : Clothing and dress in art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Even before the advent of haute couture, Paris was a great centre of fashion. During the second half of the nineteenth century, when the capital was transformed by an ambitious urban plan, its residents responded in kind, wearing styles as polished and modern as the city itself in order to participate in the exciting new social scene. Featuring famed paintings by such Impressionist masters as Degas, Cassatt, Manet, Monet and Morisot, this delightful book revisits the world of Parisian fashion through the eyes of first-hand observers. Thematic chapters present a gallery-like ensemble of paintings that follow in the footsteps of stylish Parisians as they stroll in the parks and boulevards, meet friends at cafés, take in the theatre, relax at home and go on holiday. In an extended narrative-style caption to accompany each image, fashion and art historian Debra N. Mancoff offers a detailed discussion of what men and women wore and how their dress defined them. To complete the picture, illustrated interludes, providing glimpses into dressmaking, corsetry and millinery, the origins of couture and the rise of the department store, reveal how Paris became the fashion capital of the world.
Paper Revolutions
Author: Sarah E. James
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262046563
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 397
Book Description
The experimental practices of a group of artists in the former East Germany upends assumptions underpinning Western art’s postwar histories. In Paper Revolutions, Sarah James offers a radical rethinking of experimental art in the former East Germany (the GDR). Countering conventional accounts that claim artistic practices in the GDR were isolated and conservative, James introduces a new narrative of neo-avantgarde practice in the Eastern Bloc that subverts many of the assumptions underpinning Western art’s postwar histories. She grounds her argument in the practice of four artists who, uniquely positioned outside academies, museums, and the art market, as these functioned in the West, created art in the blind spots of state censorship. They championed ephemeral practices often marginalized by art history: postcards and letters, maquettes and models, portfolios and artists’ books. Through their “lived modernism,” they produced bodies of work animated by the radical legacies of the interwar avant-garde. James examines the work and daily practices of the constructivist graphic artist, painter, and sculptor Hermann Glöckner; the experimental graphic artist and concrete and sound poet Carlfriedrich Claus; the mail artist, concrete poet, and conceptual artist Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt; and the mail artist, “visual poet,” and installation artist Karla Sachse. She shows that all of these artists rejected the idea of art as a commodity or a rarefied object, and instead believed in the potential of art to create collectivized experiences and change the world. James argues that these artists, entirely neglected by Western art history, produced some of the most significant experimental art to emerge from Germany during the Cold War.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262046563
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 397
Book Description
The experimental practices of a group of artists in the former East Germany upends assumptions underpinning Western art’s postwar histories. In Paper Revolutions, Sarah James offers a radical rethinking of experimental art in the former East Germany (the GDR). Countering conventional accounts that claim artistic practices in the GDR were isolated and conservative, James introduces a new narrative of neo-avantgarde practice in the Eastern Bloc that subverts many of the assumptions underpinning Western art’s postwar histories. She grounds her argument in the practice of four artists who, uniquely positioned outside academies, museums, and the art market, as these functioned in the West, created art in the blind spots of state censorship. They championed ephemeral practices often marginalized by art history: postcards and letters, maquettes and models, portfolios and artists’ books. Through their “lived modernism,” they produced bodies of work animated by the radical legacies of the interwar avant-garde. James examines the work and daily practices of the constructivist graphic artist, painter, and sculptor Hermann Glöckner; the experimental graphic artist and concrete and sound poet Carlfriedrich Claus; the mail artist, concrete poet, and conceptual artist Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt; and the mail artist, “visual poet,” and installation artist Karla Sachse. She shows that all of these artists rejected the idea of art as a commodity or a rarefied object, and instead believed in the potential of art to create collectivized experiences and change the world. James argues that these artists, entirely neglected by Western art history, produced some of the most significant experimental art to emerge from Germany during the Cold War.