ART OF THE EXTREME 1905-1914

Until recently Philip Hook was Director of Impressionist and Modern Art at Sotheby's. Over a quarter of a century he handled the sale of many of its greatest masterpieces, and some of its less distinguished productions too. He knows the period in question intimately, the ten years leading up to the First World War which were the most exciting, frenzied and revolutionary in the history of art. They were the crucible of Modernism, when to the horror of the conventional majority, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism and Abstract Art all burst forth in quick and shocking succession. Simultaneously the Old Master market boomed, and art itself was politically weaponised in advance of approaching war. Hook's book reexamines the period from a series of new and revealing angles. What was the conventional art against which Modernism was rebelling? Why did avant-garde artists become so obsessed with themselves? What persuaded a few bold collectors to buy difficult modern art? Why did others pay so much money for Old Masters? What was the changing view and purpose of museums? We look at the guiding lights - Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and the exciting whole new machine of sex and sublimation, of anarchism, violence and war. Paris became the capital of the modern art world and here we see its relationship with Germany, London, Russia and the rest of Europe. It is a story of death, suicide, drugs and alcohol and descent into madness as in the case of Edvard Munch. Here are artists breaking boundaries, abstraction, Picasso as well as dealers and collectors of New Art. Well-informed and readable and replete with shameless gossip and memorable anecdotes, the book is a mesmerising pleasure. With pagemarker, 426 elegant pages, well illustrated throughout with colour examples.