1900

Exactly 100 years ago, art was at a crossroads. Painters such as Sargent, Whistler, Homer, and Rouault were widely acclaimed. Cezanne, Degas, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rodin, Munch, Klimt, and other modern masters were in their prime. And the revolutionaries who would go on to change the course of Western art -- Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Kandinsky, and Nolde, among others -- were just getting started.

This book, the companion volume to a major international exhibition, provides an eye-opening look at what these and other artists were creating in this watershed year. Organized by subject -- from bathers, femmes fatales, and self-portraits to rural scenes, religion, and social comment -- and featuring more than 300 colorplates, the book presents both famous and less well-known works. By including a wide range of paintings and sculptures executed at roughly the same time, Robert Rosenblum and MaryAnne Stevens illuminate the cultural crosscurrents that were reshaping Western art -- including nationalism, psychology, and technology -- and help us see familiar masterworks with a fresh eye.