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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
Fascinating read. I love reading about this era of Parisian history.
I overall enjoyed this read.. it provided a good context for the time period and the scene going on in Montmartre. However, I felt it was flat quite often probably due to the jumping back and forth between people and names. In retrospect, I got used to it and the unfamiliar names finally caught up and provides more background to the artists’ stories. Still, I was hoping for more in-depth insight into the artists and more pictures to see their works. I will definitely use the information gleaned from this book to go on and read more in-depth about some of the artists.
i mean this book made me want to change my career path so i’d say i liked it a whole lot
Well written, in a style that is both easy and yet full of information, details and facts.
Roe paints the atmosphere in that precise place : Montmartre in the first decade of the XX century in a way that the reader is take on the journey of the artists who shaped the way art was made, created, perceived for the next century. The threads woven between the visual arts, fashion, dance, cinema and the circus create a wonderful history where Montmartre was the laboratory of a cultural revolution.
For readers who love art history, literature history, how artists create.
Roe paints the atmosphere in that precise place : Montmartre in the first decade of the XX century in a way that the reader is take on the journey of the artists who shaped the way art was made, created, perceived for the next century. The threads woven between the visual arts, fashion, dance, cinema and the circus create a wonderful history where Montmartre was the laboratory of a cultural revolution.
For readers who love art history, literature history, how artists create.
I don't have enough background knowledge on the artists to really get into this one. It's a focuses heavily on social history and doesn't provide a ton of background (which is fine, just not for me). It was well written and enjoyable, imagine it would be good for someone more into the artists it focused on.
Reading this book is like crawling into the lap of a worldly great-aunt to look at her scrapbooks of her younger years in Paris. As you flip through the pages, looking at each artifact, she weaves the story of the birth of modern art and what it was like living in 1900's Paris together. I have had a strong urge to go back to Paris and this book only exacerbated this feeling. Fun to read to get a good sense of the times and characters.
This took a while to get into but I'm glad I stuck with it as I learned so much. I recommend looking up each painting as it's mentioned to get a fuller sense of the artistic changes the books describes. Sue Roe paints a vivid picture of Paris in the 1900s and shows how art, music, dance and literature meshed together to create what we now consider Modernist Art. The pacing was a bit hard to follow at times but that didn't take away from how informative it was. Even though it felt like it was jumping around a lot, the overall arc of the book conveyed the shift from art as reproduction to art as sensation and made me understand a lot more.
From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Sue Roe's story of Pablo Picasso and other artists in the famous Paris quarter.
4* In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse, and the Birth of Modernist Art
TBR The Private Lives of the Impressionists
Sue Roe's story of Pablo Picasso and other artists in the famous Paris quarter.
4* In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse, and the Birth of Modernist Art
TBR The Private Lives of the Impressionists
There were parts where the digressions were too large, often at the expense of art writing, which was a little frustrating.
However, it's a great overview of the period and remains incredible readable even as the ideology behind modernism is tackled.
However, it's a great overview of the period and remains incredible readable even as the ideology behind modernism is tackled.