Tells the story of Germany's rich, flourishing, and diversified world of art in the last decades of the nineteenth century. This book provides a comprehensive study of that German art world. It focuses on how critics and the public responded to new forms of painting that emerged in the 1880s.

Lewis's approach through the popular journals reveals the public's growing alienation from modern artists and an increasing contempt for the public on the part of these artists and their supporters - all of which prefigured tensions in the contemporary art world. Her wide-ranging text examines not only the various ways art was promoted to and received by the public, but also anti-Semitism, the role of women artists, and changes in style of both art and criticism. Well documented, engagingly written, and vividly illustrated, this book will interest not only scholars and students but all readers interested in German cultural history and art history.

PROLOGUE: APE, APOTHEOSIS, AND SCANDEL 8
PLATES 17
PART I: THE TRIUMPH OF MODERN ART, 1885-1892 26
CHAPTER 1: CONTEMPORARY ART FOR THE MODERN NATION 28
CHAPTER 2: CARRYING ART TO THE PUBLIC 93
PART II: THE PUBLIC AND THE CRITIC 140
PART III: THE FRAGMENTING OF ART AND ITS PUBLIC, 1893-1899 184
CHAPTER 4: MODERN ARTISTS: PAUPER, DILETTANTE, AND PRINCE 186
CHAPTER 5: MODERN ART FOR ELITE PUBLIC 238
CHAPTER 6: MODERISM: ACCEPTANCE AND RESISTANCE 267
EPILOGUE: JEW, EMPEROR, AND PARANOIA 312
NOTES 316
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 413
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 433
INDEX 435
PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS 447