Overview

This book considers questions of materiality and painting, focalized through the notoriously obscure work of Georges Rouault, and offers an innovative critical approach to the various questions raised by this challenging modernist. Described as a difficult and dark painter, Rouault’s oeuvre is deeply experimental. Images of the circus emerge from a plethora of chaotic marks, while numerous landscapes appear as if ossified in thick paint. Rouault’s work explodes the genre of painting, drawing upon the residue of Gustave Moreau’s symbolism, the extremities of Fauvism, and the radical theatrical experiments of Alfred Jarry. The repetitions and re-workings at the heart of Rouault’s process defy conventional chronological treatment, and place the emphasis upon the coming-into-being of the work of art. Ultimately, the book reveals the process of making as both a search for understanding and a response to the problematic world of the 20th century.

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9781350213814

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Reviews

Jennifer Johnson's ground-breaking study offers a new, comprehensive account of the world and work of Georges Rouault. Elegant prose, rich formal description, and bold theoretical insights reveal the crucial role of materiality as a form of thought in modern art. --John R. Blakinger, Endowed Associate Professor of Contemporary Art, University of Arkansas, USA In a narrative full to bursting with luminous visual analyses and exciting passages of contextualisation, Jennifer Johnson presents us with a new vision and understanding of Georges Rouault, an artist who has languished for too long on the outskirts of Modernism. A truly captivating book. --Karen Lang, former Editor-in-Chief, The Art Bulletin, and Slade Professor of Fine Art and Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford, UK Jennifer Johnson's book is a timely and important exploration of Rouault's probing relationship with questions of materiality and meaning. It is a serious and powerful contribution to a central art-historical issue, the material character of making as a form of understanding. --David Peters Corbett, Professor of American Art & Director of the Centre for American Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK In Jennifer Johnson's reading of Rouault's surfaces, meaning accrues in a richly layered manner. Drawing upon theorists and philosophies-both contemporaneous and more recent-Johnson returns the reader to Rouault's thick, reworked, slabs of paint with new understandings of how the artist grappled with questions at the heart of modernism through his subjects, materials, and making. --Ashley Dunn, Assistant Curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA

Jennifer Johnson's ground-breaking study offers a new, comprehensive account of the world and work of Georges Rouault. Elegant prose, rich formal description, and bold theoretical insights reveal the crucial role of materiality as a form of thought in modern art. * John R. Blakinger, Endowed Associate Professor of Contemporary Art, University of Arkansas, USA * In a narrative full to bursting with luminous visual analyses and exciting passages of contextualisation, Jennifer Johnson presents us with a new vision and understanding of Georges Rouault, an artist who has languished for too long on the outskirts of Modernism. A truly captivating book. * Karen Lang, former Editor-in-Chief, The Art Bulletin, and Slade Professor of Fine Art and Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford, UK * Jennifer Johnson's book is a timely and important exploration of Rouault's probing relationship with questions of materiality and meaning. It is a serious and powerful contribution to a central art-historical issue, the material character of making as a form of understanding. * David Peters Corbett, Professor of American Art & Director of the Centre for American Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK * In Jennifer Johnson's reading of Rouault's surfaces, meaning accrues in a richly layered manner. Drawing upon theorists and philosophies-both contemporaneous and more recent-Johnson returns the reader to Rouault's thick, reworked, slabs of paint with new understandings of how the artist grappled with questions at the heart of modernism through his subjects, materials, and making. * Ashley Dunn, Assistant Curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA *

Author Information

Jennifer Johnson is a Research Fellow and Departmental Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Oxford, UK.

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