About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherPrinceton University Press

ISBN-100691016852

ISBN-139780691016856

eBay Product ID (ePID)182375

Product Key Features

Original LanguageGerman

Book TitleInnocent Eye : Children's Art and the Modern Artist

Number of Pages264 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year1997

TopicGeneral, Subjects & Themes / General, History / General

IllustratorYes

GenreArt

AuthorJonathan David Fineberg

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Weight62.1 Oz

Item Length11 in

Item Width9 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN97-004341

TitleLeadingThe

Reviews"Fineberg taps a vein ripe for critical inquiry. The Innocent Eye approaches, with systematic rigor, an important subject that deserves further study; it will intrigue any student of modernist art." --Daniel Sogg, Art & Antiques, "In his fascinating, heavily illustrated study Fineberg shows how children's paintings inspired the works of many artists, such as Picasso, Miro, Dubuffet and Klee. . . . It's a convincing argument, but Fineberg also does a fine job of looking at larger issues such as how the postwar mainstreaming of psychoanalytic theory provided later artists with a handle on the feelings of childhood that went beyond the previous 'meticulous visual analysis of child art.'" -- Publisher's Weekly, "The old modern art saw, 'My child could have done that,' is addressed head-on in this engaging study." -- Library Journal, "As an anthology of superb child art, reproduced at the same scale and quality of colour as the 'great works on modern art' that stand alongside them, The Innocent Eye is unsurpassed. In each specific case, the child's work is shown convincingly to be the source of the adult's. Both are honoured equally." --Timothy Hyman, Times Literary Supplement, "The most important contribution of Fineberg's book. . . is the way he weaves together evidence of modern artists collecting children's art, remarking upon it, using it in their work, and, in some cases, physically integrating it into their own. . . . This is all new material, and very important to our still developing sense of the role non-traditional art forms played in the working of modern art." --James Cuno, Harvard Magazine

Dewey Edition21

Dewey Decimal704/.054

Synopsis"When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael. It took me many years to learn how to draw like these children."--Pablo Picasso, upon viewing an exhibition of children's drawings, as quoted by Sir Herbert Read in 1945 The idea that modern art looks like something a child can do is a long-standing clich . For some modernists, however, the connection between their work and children's art was direct and explicit. This groundbreaking and heretical book, centered on such modern masters as Klee, Kandinsky, Picasso, and Mir , presents for the first time material from the collections of child art that these artists actually possessed as they undertook some of the greatest masterworks of their careers. As the first art historian to pursue this connection in detail, Jonathan Fineberg here explores the importance of children's art to the work of key modernists from Matisse to Jackson Pollock. Fineberg's inquiry unfolds in this handsome book, which juxtaposes modern masterpieces with the drawings by children that directly influenced them. Fineberg discusses the effect of primitivism and Freudian thought on some of these artists, and demonstrates how they valued children's art for many reasons, including its naive spontaneity and celebration of the moment, imaginative use of visual language, and its universality and candor. For each of the masters who collected child art, the reasons for doing so are as varied as his or her unique style. Fineberg has uncovered most of these major collections of child art assembled by celebrated modernists. Many examples from these collections are reproduced in this book for the first time, together with explanations as to why expressionists, cubists, futurists, and others displayed the art of children alongside their own work in exhibitions of the early twentieth century. In chapters devoted to Larionov, Kandinsky and M nter, Klee, Picasso, Mir , Dubuffet, the Cobra artists, and artists after World War II, Fineberg examines how each artist exploited aspects of child art to formulate his or her own artistic breakthroughs. With over 170 color plates and 140 black and white illustrations, this visually compelling book will stimulate new research among art historians and will inspire museum visitors to see some of their favorite modern masterpieces in a new way., "When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael. It took me many years to learn how to draw like these children."--Pablo Picasso, upon viewing an exhibition of children's drawings, as quoted by Sir Herbert Read in 1945 The idea that modern art looks like something a child can do is a long-standing cliché. For some modernists, however, the connection between their work and children's art was direct and explicit. This groundbreaking and heretical book, centered on such modern masters as Klee, Kandinsky, Picasso, and Miró, presents for the first time material from the collections of child art that these artists actually possessed as they undertook some of the greatest masterworks of their careers. As the first art historian to pursue this connection in detail, Jonathan Fineberg here explores the importance of children's art to the work of key modernists from Matisse to Jackson Pollock. Fineberg's inquiry unfolds in this handsome book, which juxtaposes modern masterpieces with the drawings by children that directly influenced them. Fineberg discusses the effect of primitivism and Freudian thought on some of these artists, and demonstrates how they valued children's art for many reasons, including its naive spontaneity and celebration of the moment, imaginative use of visual language, and its universality and candor. For each of the masters who collected child art, the reasons for doing so are as varied as his or her unique style. Fineberg has uncovered most of these major collections of child art assembled by celebrated modernists. Many examples from these collections are reproduced in this book for the first time, together with explanations as to why expressionists, cubists, futurists, and others displayed the art of children alongside their own work in exhibitions of the early twentieth century. In chapters devoted to Larionov, Kandinsky and Münter, Klee, Picasso, Miró, Dubuffet, the Cobra artists, and artists after World War II, Fineberg examines how each artist exploited aspects of child art to formulate his or her own artistic breakthroughs. With over 170 color plates and 140 black and white illustrations, this visually compelling book will stimulate new research among art historians and will inspire museum visitors to see some of their favorite modern masterpieces in a new way.

LC Classification NumberN352.F47513 1997