Books by Philippe Büttner
Félix Vallotton
by Belinda Thomson, Ann Dumas, Dita Amory, Patrick McGuinness, Philippe Büttner, Katia Poletti, Christian Rümelin
Vallotton’s vivid, enigmatic and sometimes unsettling paintings and woodcuts made him a key commentator on the social mores of fin-de-siècle Paris
By the end of the 19th century, Paris was the unrivaled capital of the Western art world. Impressionism had transformed the visual arts and post-impressionism was flourishing in its wake; new boulevards and parks had modernized the city; theaters and department stores provided endless opportunities for entertainment and consumption. Artists were seen by many as the avant-garde of a new society.
Into this dynamic world arrived the 16-year-old Félix Vallotton, who became closely involved with a group of artists known as the Nabis, which included Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. Vallotton adopted their decorative painterly language, also sharing their interest in journalistic illustration and Japanese ukiyo-e prints. His paintings and woodcuts offered witty and often unsettling observations of domestic and political life, and he is now considered one of the greatest printmakers of his age. As his work evolved, the sharp realism and cool linearity of his later style made him one of the most distinctive artists of the early 20th century.
Generously illustrated throughout with the finest of his paintings and prints, this book accompanies a new presentation of Vallotton’s oeuvre in New York and London that includes works never before seen in public and aims to reevaluate his output and legacy. Texts by leading authorities on the artist look at his life, work and reception.
Swiss artist Félix Vallotton (1865–1925) was born in Lausanne, but spent much of his working life in France. Although he produced some of his most important work in Paris in the 1890s in painting and print, his original and innovative approach persisted throughout his career.
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Henri Rousseau
by Christopher Green, Philippe Büttner, Franz Hohler
Nicknamed "Le Douanier" ("the customs officer"), Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was in his early forties when he finally embraced his métier in painting, arriving with his independently achieved realism fully formed. Like Erik Satie, whom he resembles in what Roger Shattuck memorably called "tranquil self-confidence," Rousseau straddles the Parisian avant gardes at the turn of the century, admired by Redon, Gauguin, Jarry and Degas at the outset of his career, and championed by Picasso, Apollinaire and Delaunay towards its close. Rousseau's style was derisively dubbed "Primitivism" by the press, but its lucid unity of limpid color and eerily serene definition was sophisticated in its simplicity, as his early advocates knew. Happily, Rousseau was so steeped in his vision that he could not be diverted from it--Apollinaire wrote that "Rousseau had so strong a sense of reality that when he painted a fantastic subject, he sometimes took fright and, trembling all over, had to open the window." With 80 color illustrations, this book commemorates the hundredth anniversary of the artist's death, placing at its core Rousseau's fascination with the frictions between a domesticated West and an untamed imaginary natural world. Previously unpublished records of early encounters with his works dimensionalize Rousseau within the lively milieu of his time, and show him to have been, from the start, a much beloved artist.
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