Synopses & Reviews
Signifying Art: Essays on Art after 1960 considers the work of a generation of "respondants" to the New York School, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly, who reintroduced pictorialism and verbal content in their paintings and assemblages. Their work, Marjorie Welish argues, often alludes to the history of art and culture. Also examined are the works of Minimal and Conceptual artists, particularly Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt, who sought to make objective and theoretical artifacts in response to the subjectivity that Abstract Expressionism had promoted. By interpreting the work of these artists in light of contemporary issues, Welish offers a fresh reevaluation of some of the major trends and production of postwar American painting.
Review
"Welish has done an admirable job....I think any reader of her book will come away with a more sophisticated understanding of issues that have occupied artists since 1960." Craig Adcock, CAA Reviewsindividually accented survey of post-WarAmerican art." Burlington Magazine
Synopsis
A study of the work of a generation of 'respondents' to the New York School.
Table of Contents
Part I. Narrating the Hand: 1. Pail for Ganymede: Rauschenberg's sculpture; 2. Texas, Japan, etc.: Rauschenberg's sense of place; 3. The art of Cy Twombly; 4. The art of being sparse, porous, scattered; 5. Narrating the hand: Cy Twombly and Mary Kelly; 6. When is a door not a door?; 7. Frame of mind: interpreting Jasper Johns; 8. Jasper's patterns; 9. The specter of art hype and the ghost of Yves Klein; Part II. Expressionism and Other Expressivites: 10. Harold Rosenberg: transforming the earth; 11. The art of Philip Guston; 12. Gestural aftermath; 13. Contesting leisure: Alex Katz and Eric Fischl; Part III. Ideas of Order: 14. Indeterminacy meets encyclopedia: the art of Kestutis Zapkus; 15. A Greenberg retrospective; 16. Abstractions: Barnett Newman and James Turrell; 17. Literature of silence (Nancy Haynes); 18. Boulders from Flatland: the drawings of Jene Highstein; 19. Box, aspects of (Donald Judd); 20. Quality through quantity; 21. Maquettes and models: Siah Armajani and Hannes Bruner; 22. Ideas of order (Sol Le Witt); 23. Contextualizing 'The Open Work'.