New art city
By: Jed Perl
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 641
ISBN-13: 9781400041312
Subjects: American Art; Intellectual life; Vie intellectuelle; Kunst; Art américain
Description: A fascinating, panoramic exploration of art and culture in mid-twentieth-century New York City from one of our most important and influential art critics. New Art City takes us from the solitude of the artist's studio to the uproarious bars where artists gathered, from the ramshackle bohemian neighborhoods of downtown Manhattan to the Midtown streets where steel-and-glass skyscrapers were rising and art galleries were proliferating. We encounter a kaleidoscopic range of artists. There are legendary figures-Jackson Pollock, David Smith, Willem de Kooning, Joseph Cornell, Andy Warhol, and Donald Judd-as well as still undervalued ones, such as the galvanic teacher Hans Hofmann, the lyric expressionist Joan Mitchell, the adventuresome realist Fairfield Porter, and the eccentric thinker John Graham. We encounter, too, the writers, critics, patrons, and hangers-on who rounded out the artists' world. Jed Perl helps us see what the artists were creating and understand how they confronted an exploding art audience. And he makes clear how the economic boom of the late 1950s and the increasingly enthusiastic response to Abstract Expressionism ushered in the rapacious art world of the 1960s and the theatricality of Pop Art. [from publisher description].
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [559]-614) and index.
Table of contents: title: The painter and the city; title: Climate of New York; title: 1. Manhattan geography; title: 2. The dialectical imagination; title: 3. The philosopher king; title: 4. "I condemn and affirm, say no and say yes"; title: Some versions of Romanticism; title: 5. Heroes; title: 6. A splendid modesty; title: 7. Pastorals; title: A grand collage; title: 8. Joseph Cornell in Manhattan; title: 9. Welders and others; title: 10. From readymades to cutouts; title: The artist and the public; title: 11. Going to the modern; title: 12. Making history; title: Pop theater; title: Teachers; title: The empirical imagination; title: 15. Beginning again; title: 16. Maine, Marfa, and Manhattan.