An exhibition organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art of the Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection which comprises sixty-three modern paintings, sculptures and works on paper by fifty artists. The Abstract Expressionist paintings that form the heart of this collection were nearly all created in New York City.
"In this incisive study, the curator and writer Debra Bricker Balken examines the work of the leading artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, including Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. At the same time she examines the myths surrounding the movement, the variation in the motivation and practice of artists grouped by art historians under the same heading, and the role played by critics in the movement's reception, both at the time and up to the present day." "Of equal value to the general reader and the art historical scholar alike, Balken's text is a valuable addition to the literature on one of the most influential of all twentieth-century art movements."--BOOK JACKET.
This publication contains a survey of female abstract expressionist artists, revealing the richness and lasting influence of their work and the movement as a whole as well as highlighting the lack of critical attention they have received to date.
The Abstract Expressionist movement has long been bound up in the careers and lifestyles of about twelve white male artists who exhibited in New York in the 1940s. In this book Ann Eden Gibson reconsiders the history of the movement by investigating other artists -- people of color, women, and gays and lesbians -- whose versions of abstraction have been largely ignored until now.
It is well known that the poetry of Wallace Stevens reflected his interest in the visual arts, but until now no one has recognized the poet's close involvement with the art of his own era. In this book, Glen MacLeod shows how Stevens was engaged with contemporary art theory, artists, art dealers, and artworks, and argues that this interaction played a central role in his poetry, his poetic theory, and the unusual character of his poetic development. MacLeod demonstrates that Stevens' first book, Harmonium, reflects his involvement with New York Dada during the 1910s; that such major poems as "The Man with the Blue Guitar" and "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" record his interest in the rival doctrines of surrealism and abstraction during the 1930s and early 1940s; and that the highly abstract late poetry of The Auroras of Autumn parallels in surprising ways the contemporary Abstract Expressionist movement. Aspects of Stevens' poetry that have long troubled his critics - for example, his insistence that poetry must be abstract, his lack of interest in formal experimentation, and his personal "imagination-reality complex" - are clarified when they are seen in the context of his relation to avant-garde art. Stevens' awareness of contemporary issues in the art world helped to determine his subjects, his critical vocabulary, and the ways of thinking that he explored in both his poetry and his essays. In this light, his point of view seems less peculiar, more a part of the living critical discourse at the heart of American art and literature.
A leading authority on the subject presents a radically new approach to the understanding of abstract art, in this richly illustrated and persuasive history. In his fresh take on abstract art, noted art historian Pepe Karmel chronicles the movement from a global perspective, while embedding abstraction in a recognizable reality. Moving beyond the canonical terrain of abstract art, the author demonstrates how artists from around the world have used abstract imagery to express social, cultural, and spiritual experience. Karmel builds this fresh approach to abstract art around five inclusive themes: body, landscape, cosmology, architecture, and man-made signs and patterns. In the process, this history develops a series of narratives that go far beyond the established figures and movements traditionally associated with abstract art. Each narrative is complemented by a number of featured abstract works, arranged in thought-provoking pairings with accompanying extended captions that provide an in-depth analysis. This wide-ranging examination incorporates work from Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America, as well as Europe and North America, through artists ranging from Wu Guanzhong, Joan Miró, Jackson Pollock, to Hilma af Klint, and Odili Donald Odita. Breaking new ground, Karmel has forged a new history of this key art movement.
Abstract Expressionist works on paper from the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art are presented in this volume, which documents the wealth of the Museum's holdings in that area. Many of them are published here for the first time, and several are recent additions to the collection. All are illustrated in full-page color reproductions that show the nuances of each work in great detail. The Abstract Expressionists are best known for their paintings and sculptures, and virtually all of the many publications about these artists concentrate on those large-scale works. This unique catalogue deals exclusively with their smaller, more intimate works on paper, providing many new insights about the routes that led to the Abstract Expressionists' innovative artistic accomplishments. The nineteen artists included are William Baziotes, James Brooks, Elaine de Kooning, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Gerome Kamrowski, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Theodore Roszak, Mark Rothko, Anne Ryan, David Smith, Theodoros Stamos, and Mark Tobey. Each of them is discussed in a separate essay, which encompasses information about the artist's background and development, commentary about the importance of drawing in his or her oeuvre, and an analysis of each work in the selection. Also included in the essays is technical information about a number of the individual works that enhances understanding of the variety and originality of these artists' media and techniques.
