From Amazon.com This epic documentary does a wonderful job of recapturing the revolutionary impact the impressionists made while providing a historical and artistic context for this extraordinary group of painters. The work of Monet, Degas, Morisot, and their fellow impressionists has now become so familiar that its power to shock has all but disappeared.
Young and resolutely modern, these artists threw off the shackles of academic art to capture everyday life in paintings that were iconoclastic in both style and subject. At first they struggled to survive because their work was rejected by the conservative Paris Salon, but those with independent means helped those without (Monet in particular was frequently rescued from poverty by his friends), and gradually they became impossible to ignore. Bruce Alfred's script thoroughly explains the development of the impressionists' approach to art and reveals fascinating aspects of their individual personalities, while a combination of dramatic reconstructions, period photographs, and the paintings themselves creates a rich and informative visual tapestry. Anyone with an interest in the history of art will find much to enjoy. --Simon Leake
Additional Features DVD is the perfect medium for this documentary. The paintings--both in the film and in the accompanying photo gallery--look wonderful, and each disc includes a timeline of important events. --Simon Leake
Customer Reviews: magnifique!April 12, 2002 Eric Weiss 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
My wife and I love Impressionism. We have several art books on the topic, and we saw the massive exhibit in Washington, D.C., in 1986 (from which we're still recovering!), and a more recent one at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.
BUT ... we learned so much in this DVD set (which I gave to my wife as a Christmas present) that we had not read/learned anywhere else: there is a lot of information about the artists' personal lives, family problems, quarrels with each other, their failing health and deaths, etc., that is almost as fascinating as the paintings themselves -- which are simply LUMINOUS in this presentation.
The only disappointment is the limited "extras" and the limited number of paintings in the gallery extra -- perhaps a reason to downrate this to 4 stars. But ... I'll keep it at 5.
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