Artists' Estates: Reputations in Trust - Hardcover

Salvesen, Magda; Cousineau, Diane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813536049 ISBN 13: 9780813536040

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Artists' Estates offers a fascinating journey into the complex and competitive art world through the distinctive lens of those who deal with the paintings, prints, and sculpture that artists leave behind after their deaths. Bringing together interviews conducted by Magda Salvesen, the widow of the second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter Jon Schueler, this unique book provides a window into the goals and desires, the conflicts and frustrations, and the emotional and financial strains that confront widows, companions, sons, and daughters as the heirs to artists' estates. The judiciously arranged and edited interviews also address the benefits and liabilities of foundations and trusts through the insights of lawyers, gallery dealers, and foundation directors.

Readers will explore well-known estates, including those of Roy Lichtenstein, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Milton Avery, Romare Bearden, and David Smith, as well as the equally intriguing legacies of lesser-known artists whose work came to the fore in the forties and fifties.

Together, the passionate testimonies of families and lovers, the measured voices of art professionals, and the more than eighty photographs offer an indispensable entre into the private and public worlds of art.

About this title

About the Author

Magda Salvesen is an independent art and garden historian and is coeditor (with Diane Cousineau) of The Sound of Sleat: A Painter s Life. Diane Cousineau is a lecturer in English at Washington College, the author of Letters and Labyrinths: Women Writing/Cultural Codes, and a coeditor (with Magda Salvesen) of The Sound of Sleat: A Painter s Life.

Reviews

"The imposing shadow of the artist" is cast throughout this important resource as it sheds light on questions pertaining to artists' estates. Two figures dominate: Lee Krasner, widow of Jackson Pollock, and Annalee Newman, widow of Barnett Newman, women who devoted themselves to their husbands' art when the men were alive, then shaped their posthumous artistic legacies with focus, fervor, and intelligence. "The widow is the memory," according to Phyllis Diebenkorn, widow of painter Richard Diebenkorn, and her tale typifies situations found in many of the interviews conducted by Salvesen, herself a painter's widow. Other examples involve the estates of Milton Avery, David Smith, Mark Rothko, and Roy Lichtenstein, each seen from multiple perspectives on the dynamics among artists, gallery owners, wives, and heirs in this well-illustrated and innovative volume. Whitney Scott
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Edition details

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813536049
• ISBN 13: 9780813536040
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400