Description

Considered the master of the essay, Meyer Schapiro approached scholarship with a great deal of imaginative historical perception, as well as an "unashamed passion for the works of art before him," rendering his writings highly engaging and appealing to a broad range of readers.

A rich diversity of writing can be found within this collection, which offers studies of individual artists (Cézanne, Picasso, Mondrian, and Seurat) as well as essays on the reception and social meanings of modern art. Yet, even in his most aesthetic analyses, Schapiro never lost sight of the heroic efforts of the individual artists and of the cultural contexts in which their works were made and received.

Modern Art won the National Book Critics Circle Award (1978) and the Mitchell Prize for Art History (1979) and was a nominee for a National Book Award (1979).