Ruthless hedonism
Subtitle: the American reception of Matisse
By: John O'Brian.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 284
Subjects: Matisse, Henri, 1869-1954 -- Criticism and interpretation; Matisse, Henri, 1869-1954 -- Public opinion; Art critics -- United States -- Psychology; Art and society -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Description: This intriguing, wide-ranging investigation of Matisse's self-promotion, America's uneasy embrace of modernism, and America's consumer culture and politics provides a rich context to Clement Greenberg's words published in the Nation in 1947."Matisse's cold hedonism and ruthless exclusion of everything but the concrete, immediate sensation will in the future, once we are away from the present Zeitgeist, be better understood as the most profound mood of the first half of the twentieth century."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-271) and index.