Antoine's Alphabet: Watteau and His World

The 18th-century rococo artist Jean-Antoine Watteau is art critic Perl's favorite painter, one who transforms “powerful feelings—of love, friendship, lust, avidity, curiosity—into delectable artistic play” and “poetic pattern.” Perl's exquisitely composed study is organized alphabetically; from “Actors” and “Art-for-Art's Sake” to “Zeuxis,” and each chapter involves a theme, individual or movement related to Watteau. There are many delightful surprises, even to the reader familiar with the artist's oeuvre; Perl illuminates the links between Watteau's Harlequins and Pierrots and Beckett's characters, “so clownish and so heartrending.” His entry on “Flirtation” expands this theme, ubiquitous in Watteau's paintings, into a profound commentary on love and metamorphosis. Perl's essays on Watteau's most famous works, The Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera and Gersaint's Shopsign , are equally inspired; Cythera displays what for Perl are Watteau's most poignant themes: the confounding of one's own emotions and the “elegant chaos” of the mind's consistently contradictory nature. Perl, art critic for the New Republic , has written a carefully researched, book of rare beauty and provocation. 44 illus. (Sept. 19)