Renoir: The Body, The Senses
Clark Art Institute
Impressionism is one of the more underrated genres when it comes to mainstream recognition, specifically the genre that focuses more on experimentalism.
There are few that reached the league of Pierre-Auguste Renoir dominated, an artists that diligently honoured classical traditions and infused them with his own idiosyncratic style that eventually coined a whole new genre with the main subject matter being the nude.
While a lot of artists treated the nude as an end in itself, Renoir approached it from a myriad of angles for personal expression.
This book examines carefully the way Renoir depicted the human body with all its nuances, beauty and flaws and does thereby not merely scratch the surface by highlighting the hedonist attributes but goes deeper as it examines the idea of voyeurism and sexism as well as the way in which the artist skilfully combined neo-classicist and impressionist influences.
Opulently illustrated, the tome features Renoir’s major works across different media, i.e. paintings, sculptures as well as everything in between. The fantastic quality of the paper and printing add another dimension and nuance fully display as symbiosis Renoir created with form, movement, emotion and colour.
The man’s paintings radiate heat and intensity without relying on the subject matter.
There are few artists that mastered sensuality, naturalist depictions and temperance in the way Renoir did and by juxtaposing his emissions with those of his followers show the immense influence he exerted over the world of art at large.
