Catalogue of the exhibition Paths to Abstraction 1867-1917, held at the Art Gallery of new South Wales, Sydney, June 26-Sept. 19, 2010

Surveying the art of 5 decades, from 1867 to 1917, this book follows the broad and diverse ways that artists and their public learnt to see and to judge works of art abstractly. It argues that abstraction arose directly from a tradition of speculation about the nature of art and of aesthetic experience

Texts in English, with some contributions translated from French or German

Towards abstraction / Terence Maloon -- Passage: note on the ideology of early abstraction / Jean-Claude Lebensztejn -- Dream of abstraction / Richard Shiff. Kandinsky and Marc: their concept of the avant-garde / Annegret Hoberg -- Paths to abstraction 1867-1917. Whistler and his influence ; Monet and Cézanne: the power of the palette and the 'tache' ; Vuillard, Denis and the Nabis ; Primitivism and the woodcut ; Exaltation of colour ; Cubism ; 1912-17: the limits of abstraction / Terence Maloon