First published in 1883, but never before translated into English, this
collection of J.-K. Huysmans' art criticism reveals the author of
Against Nature to be as combative in his aesthetic opinions as he was in
his literary ones. At a time when the Impressionists were still being
ridiculed, or worse still ignored, Huysmans defiantly proclaimed Degas
to be the best painter in France. He filled his pages with analyses of
the works of artists whose genius and popularity have been confirmed by
time: Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Gauguin, Mary Cassatt, Edouard Manet,
Berthe Morisot, Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau.
Huysmans intersperses his reviews of these independent artists with
those of the annual Official Salon, whose conventional and dryly
academic works he lambasts with his customary gusto and invective.
This is the first complete translation of L'Art moderne, and includes
200 black and white illustrations, notes and a glossary of artists.
'Few late nineteenth-century art critics were more clearly on the right
side of history than the early J.-K. Huysmans. For to read his essay on
the 'Exhibition of the Independents in 1880' is to discover in
retrospect an anticipation of the twentieth century's aesthetic
preferences. In privileging Degas over Manet, Huysmans was already
distancing himself from his Naturalist maitre, Zola. That journey was to
be completed the following year with the publication of his most famous
work, Against Nature, which also marks an art-historical shift in the
Symbolist direction of Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon, and away from
the quest for modern life embodied in his accounts of Impressionists
refuses in 1880, 1881 and 1882. These essays stand in contradistinction
to the vitriol he pours on the official Salons of 1879, 1880,1881 and
1882... King displays both considerable knowledge and easy humour in the
tone of his introduction. His detailed notes and glossary of artists are
useful, but particularly appealing to the reader will be the inclusion,
in the main body of the text, of small black-and-white illustrations for
a number of paintings referred to, some taken from the original Salon
catalogues' Nicholas White in The Times Literary Supplement
