Abstract Expressionism (World of Art)
by David Anfam
from Thames & Hudson
The most important art movement since the Second World War, Abstract Expressionism revolutionized the way Americans viewed art and culture alike. Drawing on a vast array of scholarly research, David Anfam examines the politically radical spirit of a nucleus of artists who transgressed the traditional forms of American art and faced the tensions of a modernizing society. The author places the movement within a broad cultural background, while at the same time giving a close account of the visual art of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, as well as the photography of Aaron Siskind and the sculpture of David Smith.
Jackson Pollock (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)
by Mike Venezia
from Children's Press (CT)
Presents a biography of Jackson Pollock
The Paintings of Joan Mitchell (Whitney Museum of American Art)
by Jane Livingston
from University of California Press
Joan Mitchell (1926-1992) was one of the few women among the first-rank Abstract Expressionist painters. She outpaced all but a handful of her male mentors and counterparts, while only Lee Krasner stands as a possible rival among her female counterparts. Although well regarded by critics, fellow artists, and the general public, Mitchell's achievement has never received full recognition; her work has not been shown in New York for more than twenty-five years. This exquisitely illustrated volume and the exhibition that it accompanies restore the artist to her rightful place in the history of American painting. Spanning Mitchell's entire career, from early works of 1951 until the year of her death, The Paintings of Joan Mitchell includes a wealth of breathtaking paintings, both intimate and grand in scale, that reveal Mitchell's fierce dedication to her art and reflect both the struggles and the artistic triumphs she achieved with her distinctive vision of Abstract Expressionism.
Jane Livingston draws on the artist's personal papers, including her journals and extensive correspondence, to provide an illuminating interpretation of the artist and her work. Linda Nochlin, who was a friend of Mitchell, discusses the artist's experience working in a field dominated by men. A third text by Whitney Curator Yvette Lee explores a distinctive and little-known suite of paintings entitled La Grande Vallée, created in 1983-84. Mounted with the full cooperation of the estate of Joan Mitchell, the exhibition contains many paintings rarely seen before--and in some cases never publicly exhibited. This book includes an exhibition history; an extensive artist bibliography of related monographs, reviews, and filmed interviews; and color plates and listing of all the works appearing in the exhibition.
Abstraction in Art and Nature
by Nathan Cabot Hale
from Dover Publications
How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art
by Serge Guilbaut
from University Of Chicago Press
Hans Hofmann: Revised and Expanded
by Sam Hunter
from Rizzoli International Publications
This book is the only comprehensive treatment of one of Abstract Expressionism's most important forefathers: Hans Hofmann. Hans Hofmann attends to every stage of his prolific career. Nearly 300 gorgeous color plates reveal this modern master's extraordinary sense of color: beautifully vibrant greens, rich blues and brilliant reds organized in strikingly powerful patterns. Sam Hunter, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, writes a substantive essay on every aspect of Hofmann's distinguished body of work. Five important essays by the artist himself are included, revealing his philosophy of art which was so influential to the generations that followed him. Frank Stella, an important painter who deeply admired his work, also contributes an essay.
The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning
by Dore Ashton
from University of California Press
With the emergence of Abstract Expressionism after World War II, the attention of the international art world turned from Paris to New York. Dore Ashton captures the vitality of the cultural milieu in which the New York School artists worked and argued and critiqued each other's work from the 1930s to the 1950s. Working from unsifted archives, from contemporary newspapers and books, and from extensive conversations with the men and women who participated in the rise of the New York School, Ashton provides a rich cultural and intellectual history of this period. In examining the complex sources of this important movement--from the WPA program of the 1930s and the influx of European ideas to the recognition in the 1950s of American painting on an international scale--she conveys the concerns of an extraordinary group of artists including Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Philip Guston, Barnett Newman, Arshile Gorky, and many others. Rare documentary photographs illustrate Ashton's classic appraisal of the New York School scene.
Elmer Bischoff: The Ethics of Paint
by Susan Landauer
from University of California Press
Elmer Bischoff (1916-1991) is generally regarded as one of the leaders among the artists in the San Francisco Bay Area who, after contributing to the local emergence of Abstract Expressionism during the 1940s and 50s, shifted the terms of their spectacularly sensuous brushwork to recognizable imagery. Bill Berkson writes that if "David Park was the classicist of the founding triad of the Bay Area Figurative painters, and Richard Diebenkorn the modernist, Bischoff was the romantic." Designed to accompany a major retrospective of Bischoff's work, this superb volume is lavishly illustrated with duotones and color plates that faithfully capture the subtle variations in shade that characterize the painter's oeuvre. Berkson and Susan Landauer, both of whom knew Bischoff, provide the definitive view of the life, art, and teaching career of this important artist.
Native to the Bay Area, Bischoff studied at the University of California under the "Berkeley School" modernists Worth Ryder, Erle Loran, and Margaret Peterson. His experience during World War II profoundly affected his view of the world and his place in it. In 1946, Bischoff joined the faculty of the California School of Fine Arts where--with colleagues Edward Corbett, Richard Diebenkorn, Claire Falkenstein, David Park, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Hassel Smith, and Clyfford Still--he found himself at the hub of avant-garde expression in the Bay Area. Throughout his career, Bischoff applied his visual intelligence and unusual personal integrity in creating a uniquely varied body of work that invites our investigation.
Having interviewed many of the artist's surviving colleagues and family members, Landauer offers valuable primary documentation on Bischoff, the Bay Area Figurative School, and the cultural history of the Northern California art scene. Her lively text is supported with insightful research into the social and political background of the period. She considers Bischoff's career in relation to the European artists who influenced him, his interactions with his local contemporaries, and his reactions to the New York art scene. A useful chronology of the artist's life, a bibliography, and documentary photographs that Landauer uncovered during her research make this volume an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the artistic vision of Elmer Bischoff.
Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism
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