Apollinaire on Art: 2

by Guillaume Apollinaire

Poet, critic, impresario, gadfly, visionary, tastemaker: more than anyone, Guillaume Apollinaire embodies the frenzied art world of Paris in the early 20th century. His rampant enthusiasms and antipathies, and his remarkable acumen, make him still today the most evocative commentator on the intellectual ferment of the time. In 1905 he championed Picasso and in 1907 he promoted Braque in reviews that were amazingly sharp and prescient. He first identified the importance of Delaunay, Duchamp, and Rousseau, coined the word "Surrealism," and almost singlehandedly pushed Cubism into the mainstream. With a new preface by Roger Shattuck, this edition of Apollinaire on Art is the only collection in English of these seminal and ever fresh writings.

Genres: Art, Essays, Art History

546 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1918

About the author

Italian-French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, originally Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, led figures in avant-garde literary and artistic circles.

A Polish mother bore Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, this known writer and critic.

People credit him among the foremost of the early 20th century with coining the word surrealism and with writing Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1917), the play of the earliest works, so described and later used as the basis for an opera in 1947.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillau...

Reviews

[Christopher]

M. Odilon Redon, who rarely exhibits his work, has sent some very curious mystical blobs.

I did in fact inform the two ill-bred young men that the incident would be resolved in the customary way on the dueling ground. At that, they immediately retracted, prevented no doubt by their cubist principles from engaging in a fight.

[Brenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important work for anyone interested in early 20th century art history. I knew Apollinaire was a fantastic poet, but now I'm equally impressed by his writings on art and criticism.

[Sophie L · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I was more of an art girlie, this probably would have made a lot more sense! But I did enjoy a lot of Apollinaire’s descriptions and the way he wrote about the cubists.