Essay
Vision and Design
Roger Fry · 1920
Synopsis
Twenty-five essays written from 1901 to 1920, collected together. The author argues that the value of a work lies in the order of its forms, lines, masses and colours, and not in what it represents. He deals in turn with Giotto, Cézanne, Bushman art, African sculpture and the art of ancient America. The collection closes with a look back at the reception of the new painting, before which the cultivated public had cried anarchy, and the author sees in this a social prejudice more than an aesthetic one.
Context
Its author had mounted two exhibitions in London, in 1910 and 1912, which caused a scandal. The first came about because of a free slot in a gallery's calendar; these painters had to be named in haste, and the word he chose then, and had already used, is still in use. More than twenty-five thousand visitors paid to see Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse; one critic spoke of a plot to destroy all European painting. A novelist of his circle would later place in December 1910 the moment when human character changed. The collection came ten years after.
Who it is for
A collection of essays that can be read separately, in English: there is no French translation of the book.
Prizes and reception
Its author is credited with the term Post-Impressionism, chosen for the exhibition of 1910 and since in common use among art historians.
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