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There is some continuity in all this stylistic leap-frogging - the subject matter of the Impressionists (streets, cafes, parks etc.), the geometrical compositions of Cezanne, and, above all, the blazing colours of the Fauves. Because it is as a colourist that Macke is treasured today - even his most derivative paintings are lit with a luminous, Degas-like glow. Meseure defines Macke's life-work as an attempt to reconcile 'abstraction' with 'empathy', to paint the found world with severe formalism, pushing the representation towards abstraction without ever abandoning the former. Inevitably, dead at the age of 27, Macke cannot but seem (Meseure concludes) an artist of unfulfilled promise.
Macke's text is serviceable as a biographical introduction to the artist, and as a guide to the formal properties of his work, his use of colour and his compositional method. In overempahsising his interest in form over content, however, she tends to under-estimate the latter, which leads to some dubious interpretation of the paintings. For instance, the major 'Girls Under Trees' of 1914 is considered a 'utopian vision', despite the fact that one girl is isolated from two groups, separated from the one nearest by a phallic tree which might explain why. Meseure quotes Macke - 'Even in the games of children, even in the hat of a cocotte, in our joy at a sunny day, invisible ideas gently assume material form' - but doesn't seem to grasp the darker implications of this credo. the solitude, the inertia and the facelessness of his figures certainly allow for a more negative, perhaps deeper appreciation.
In any case, the magnificent, generous, full-colour reproductions allow us to make up our own minds. which begs one question - how can Taschen produce such high-quality reproductions in such cheaply priced books, when many of its competitors offer dull photocopies?
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