On Modern American Art - Hardcover

Rosenblum, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810936836 ISBN 13: 9780810936836

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, 1999

Synopsis

Collects essays that explore the meanings, movements, personalities, and paradoxes of twentieth-century American art

About this title

From the Publisher:

Robert Rosenblum is one of today's most acute observers of American art-a critic, curator, and art historian whose writings helped establish the reputations of Lichtenstein, Johns, Warhol, and Frank Stella and who continues to influence the contemporary art scene. This book collects Rosenblum's 50 best essays from the last 40 years-most never before published in book form-to take readers on an exhilarating exploration of the meanings, movements, personalities, and paradoxes of American art of the 20th century. Whether examining "My Life with Rothko" or de Kooning's "fatal women," Koons' Made in Heaven or the Starn Twins' Crucifixion, Rosenblum's essays are unfailingly provocative and illuminating. A rich selection of illustrations makes this a feast for everyone interested in modern art. 206 illustrations, 6 1/2 x 9 1/2" Robert Rosenblum is a professor of fine arts at New York University, a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and a contributing editor at ArtForum. His 14 previous books include such classics as Abrams' Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art and, with H. W. Janson, 19th-Century Art. He lives in New York City.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starting out in the 1950s with Pop and Post-Painterly painting (Frank Stella, Jasper Johns) and ending up with big shots from the 1980s (Eric Fischl, Jeff Koons), these 50 essays revisit every stage of Rosenblum's long career as a critic and reviewer, offering an idiosyncratic tour of recent visual art. Rosenblum (Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art), a professor at NYU, Guggenheim curator and Artforum contributing editor explains that he aims "to translate the visceral experience of art into... modes of language and art history." Usually he succeeds, as his short pieces introduce and make particular cases for Rothko, Cy Twombly, Joe Brainard, Mike and Doug Starn, and others. (All but two of the essays have been published before; many began as reviews of exhibitions.) Equally comfortable with the retrograde, the canonical and the new, Rosenblum gravitates in particular to the ways in which painters consider the history of their form. For Rosenblum, Willem de Kooning's dangerous women revise Ingres' visions, and Andrew Wyeth's famous Christina's World stays true to a peculiarly American reverie. (Sculptors and installation artists make it in; most conceptual art does not.) More general topics addressed include the importance of retrospective and memory in American painting; the heroic ambitions of Abstract Expressionists; Giorgio de Chirico's "historic quotation" and its later equivalents in U.S. paintings; and the perennial question, "What Is American About American Art?" Though it's always clear what he means to say, Rosenblum's prose can be less than compelling. Yet despite some awkward sentences, he makes a convincing case for the painter Mark Innerst, whose "time capsules" neatly reimagine cities' space. 206 b&w illustrations.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0810936836
• ISBN 13: 9780810936836
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384