Enfilade

From the University of Toronto Press:

W. McAllister Johnson, The Rise and Fall of the Fine Art Print in Eighteenth-Century France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 472 pages, ISBN: 978-1442637122 , $85.

Sanctioned by France’s Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and struck primarily in order to disseminate the works of the Academy’s members, the eighteenth-century fine art print flourished only briefly. Yet it set into motion the interdependence of graphic and pictorial media. Here, W. McAllister Johnson distills a lifetime of research into an essential study of this seminal phenomenon and chronicles the issues, decisions, and practicalities inherent in making copperplate engravings as articles of art and commerce. His exceptional erudition makes this an unparalleled resource for the study of visual culture and of all aspects of printmaking before the French Revolution.

W. McAllister Johnson is a professor emeritus in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto. His most recent book is Versified Prints: A Literary and Cultural Phenomenon.

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C O N T E N T S

Preface

1  The Full Statement of the Question
2  Orienting Concepts
3  Prints as Information
4  The Fine Art Print Defined
5  Pendant Prints
6  The Académie as Catalyst and Regulator
7  The Académie and the Artist
8  Creative Issues
9  Response Time
10 Career Calculus
11 Reputation and Reflected Glory
12 Commercial Ploys and the Art of the Annonce
13 Prints and Paintings on Exhibition
14 Engraved, Not Engraved
15 Criticism, Controversy and Censure
16 Greuze Prints, including the Salon
17 The Clash of Genres
18 Conclusion

Appendix A: The Mercure’s Editorial Policy regarding Prints (1728)
Appendix B: Problems of Engraving and Collecting Prints (1754)
Appendix C: Wille’s Appreciation of Jean Daullé (1763)
Appendix D: An Oudry Portrait for the Book Trade (1767)
Appendix E: A Greuze ‘Lost to France’ multiplied by a Print (1767)
Appendix F: The Art Market : Paintings, Pendants and Petits Sujets (1780)

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From New South Books:

Kerrianne Stone and Gerard Vaughan, eds., The Piranesi Effect (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2015), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-1742234267, $60.

This book publishes a conference convened in February 2014 on the global impact of Piranesi: Piranesi and the Impact of the Late Baroque, presented in collaboration with the State Library and the Baillieu Library.

The work of Italian printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) has captivated artists, architects and designers for centuries. Although contemporary Australia is a long way from eighteenth-century Rome, it is home to substantial collections of his works, the largest being at the State Library of Victoria and the University of Melbourne.

The Piranesi Effect is a collection of exquisitely illustrated essays on the impact of Piranesi’s work throughout the years. The book brings together Australian and international experts who investigate Piranesi’s world and its connections to the study of art and the practice of artists today. From curators and art historians, to contemporary artists like Bill Henson and Ron McBurnie, the contributors each bring their own passion and insight into the work of Piranesi, illuminating what it is about his work that still inspires such wonder.

Kerrianne Stone is the Curator, Prints, at the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne repository of the first Paris edition of Piranesi’s work. She has worked with several collections across museums and galleries in Melbourne. Gerard Vaughan is Director of the National Gallery of Australia. For 13 years he was director of the National Gallery of Victoria, before retiring to take up a research professorship in The Australian Institute of Art History at Melbourne University. He has a special interest in the rise of neoclassicism in late eighteenth-century Europe.

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