Mainstreams of Modern Art  

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"The wonder of a painting by Bouguereau is that it is so completely, so absolutely, all of a piece. Not a single element is out of harmony with the whole; there is not a flaw in the totality of the union between conception and execution. The trouble with Bouguereau's perfection is that the conception and the execution are perfectly false. Yet this is perfection of a kind, even if it is a perverse kind". --Mainstreams of Modern Art: David to Picasso (1959) John Canaday

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Mainstreams of Modern Art: David to Picasso (1959) is a reference book by John Canaday. It comprehensively covers modern art from the start of Romanticism in the 18th century to Cubism and Abstract art in the early 20th century. Mainstreams enjoyed wide commercial and critical success, and was awarded the 1959 Athenaeum Literary Award.

It also contains a ten-page appendix "Notes on Modern Architecture", the final five pages of which are devoted to criticism of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose design Canaday states "have failed disastrously." But in the same sentence, he also praised Wright's buildings as "some of the most beautiful structures of the century bearing his name." This, combined with Canaday's other outspoken views, led a group of artists, collectors, and academics to write a letter to the New York Times in protest.

A revised edition was published shortly before Canaday's death in 1985, and is still required reading at the university level in the United States and worldwide.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Mainstreams of Modern Art" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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