Judith Rothschild: An Artist's Search

This lavishly illustrated monograph accompanied a retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. An intimate account of Rothschild's life, based on her journals, with a critical survey of her abstract paintings.

Art historian Flam knew Rothschild (1921^-93) and yet was surprised at what he discovered over the course of his research for this monograph. He hadn't realized how intrigued she was with a "color-music analogy" or the extent to which poetry inspired her paintings. He was also unaware of Rothschild's persistent questioning of the validity of abstraction versus figuration. Her work looks abstract, but in truth her organic and animated compositions curve to the contours of land, sea, and the human body. Her life story is the same--it seems straightforward enough, but Flam's respectful account reveals a great divide between her early success as a painter in New York City and her 20-year exile in California with a domineering husband, followed by divorce and then an artistic renaissance upon her return to New York. Rothschild's oeuvre is richly reproduced, and Flam, well versed in the work of three artists with strong ties to her aesthetic--Matisse, Motherwell, and Diebenkorn--is keenly sensitive to the forces that fueled Rothschild's irrepressible creativity. Donna Seaman