Synopses & Reviews
This book brings together a representative selection of Robert Motherwell's writings about art, public lectures, essays, interviews, and letters. Motherwell's writing was invaluable in articulating the intent of the New York School of American artistsand#151;Pollock, de Kooning, Gottlieb, Kline, Baziotes, Still, Gorkyand#151;during a period when their work was often reviled for its departure from traditional representation. Motherwell was not only the primary theorist of abstract expressionism but also one of its major exponents. As founder of the Documents of Modern Art series (later renamed The Documents of Twentieth-Century Art), he gathered the writings of modern artists to give them a voice at a time when very few people understood their theories or work.
Synopsis
This collection shows how, as a painter, a lecturer, and editor of a series of pioneering books on modern art, Motherwell was influential in both illuminating and shaping the development of what he termed "the enterprise" of abstract art.
Synopsis
"This book is essential reading for anyone thinking about the uneasy clash of modernism and postmodernism in postwar America; Motherwell's writing played a decisive role and this volume is an admirably full account of it."and#151;Jonathan Fineberg is Gutgsell Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois and Chair of the Center for the Study of Modern Art at The Phillips Collection
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 301-325) and index.
About the Author
Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) was a Stanford-educated Californian who made his way to New York and became a painter after graduate work in philosophy at Harvard and in art history at Columbia. Editor Stephanie Terenzio is the former Assistant Director and Curator of 20th-Century Art of the University of Connecticut's William Benton Museum of Art.