Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot - Paperback

With this widely acclaimed work, Fried revised the way in which eighteenth-century French painting and criticism were viewed and understood.

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With this widely acclaimed work, Michael Fried revised the way in which eighteenth-century French painting and criticism are viewed and understood. Analyzing paintings produced between 1753 and 1781 and the comments of a number of critics who wrote about them, especially Dennis Diderot, Fried discovers a new emphasis in the art of the time, based not on subject matter or style but on values and effects.