Impressionism : the art of landscape /

This is the catalogue for the inaugural exhibition at the Museum Barberini, Potsdam. Opened in January 2017, the museum was built on the site formerly occupied by the 18th-century Palais Barberini, which was destroyed during WW II. The opening of this ambitious reconstruction of Frederick the Great's building was celebrated by an equally ambitious presentation of Impressionist landscape painting. On the whole, the project is a success.The exhibition pulled together a large number of important works from across the full range of Impressionist landscape painting. Replete with color reproductions, the catalogue is divided into eight thematic sections, each prefaced by a brief descriptive essay geared toward nonspecialists. For the benefit of specialists, the catalogue also includes a number of excellent interpretive essays by well-regarded scholars, among them Richard Shiff (author of Cézanne and the End of Impressionism, CH, Feb'85) and Stephen Eisenman (author, with others, of Nineteenth-Century Art: A Critical History, CH, Sep'94, 32-0085). In his essay, Shiff, sparked by Heinrich Wölfflin's assessment of Monet's art as evidence of painting's "alienation of the sign from the thing," offers a perceptive semiotic reading of Monet's (and Cézanne's) mark making. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. --David E. Gliem, Eckerd College