270 pages : 27 cm

This volume presents a survey of art from the first two decades of the twentieth century. The authors begin by exploring how aspects of the primitive were invoked by the rural artists' colonies formed in France and Germany at the end of the nineteenth century and by the work of the Fauves and the German Expressionists a few years later. The book then develops an analysis of Cubist works based on semiotic theory, considering the social and cultural values encoded in such signifying systems, and investigating the relationship between representation and ideology. The final chapter considers some problems of interpretation and evolution posed by specific examples of abstract art ranging from Malevich to Mondrian

Includes bibliographical references and index

Ch. 1. Primitivism and the 'Modern' / Gill Perry -- Introduction: Primitivism in art -- historical debate. pt. 1. 'The going away' -- a preparation for the 'modern'? 'Clogs and granite': Brittany and Pont-Aven. 'Pillaging the savages of Oceania': Gauguin and Tahiti. Primitivism and Kulturkritik: Worpswede in the 1890s. pt. 2. The decorative, the expressive and the primitive. The decorative and the 'culte de la vie': Matisse and Fauvism. The expression and the Expressionist. Expression and the body -- Ch. 2. Realism and Ideology: An Introduction to Semiotics and Cubism / Francis Frascina. Representation: language, signs, realism. Art and semiotics. Realism, ideology and the 'discursive' in Cubism. Artistic subcultures: signs and meaning -- Ch. 3. Abstraction / Charles Harrison. Abstraction, figuration and representation. On interpretation. Autonomy. Kazimir Malevich. Piet Mondrian

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