Product Description

The most important art movement since the Second World War, Abstract Expressionism revolutionized the way Americans viewed art and culture alike. Drawing on a vast array of scholarly research, David Anfam examines the politically radical spirit of a nucleus of artists who transgressed the traditional forms of American art and faced the tensions of a modernizing society. The author places the movement within a broad cultural background, while at the same time giving a close account of the visual art of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, as well as the photography of Aaron Siskind and the sculpture of David Smith.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #582973 in Books
• Published on: 1990-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Review
Art book of the year. -- The Guardian, 27 December 1990

Highly recommended for high school and college libraries. -- School Arts Journal, February 1993

Customer Reviews

Art critique vies to outstage the art itself
What I found most striking about this book was the way that the writing ABOUT the art rose to such a complex, historical, metaphorical and intuitive exploration of the art, that I sensed it beginning to vie with the abstract expressionist art itself. In reading this book I began to understand how it is that we've arrived at a time where art criticism can seem like a snobby and pretentious game to many, where many self-serving pages can be written about the meaning of a work of art which consists of a toilet or a piece of trash. Not that the art criticism in this book itself seems to partake of intellectual fraud -- no, I did not sense that at all -- but rather I can start to sense here the justification of the art criticism as an art in itself, and sense it beginning to break away from the art to have a life in itself. I do believe that rather than being hung in museums, art serves a better purpose when it lives with us in a more daily, ordinary way, and that the best response we can have to it, is not an attempt to intellectually understand it, but rather to artistically respond to it. In that regard, it makes sense that art criticism would begin to exist as an art in itself.
As other reviewers mention there are a lot of black and white reprints in this book, but you can still enjoy the forms and tonal values of the paintings, and I even think it's sometimes helpful to look at a color painting in monochrome to see these aspects of it more clearly. This reduces some distractions.

A very good introduction
Whether you are a student, a teacher, or just an art lover, this is undoubtedly the best introduction to the abstract-expressionist movement available on the market. The author is a leading authority on the subject and covers the careers of all the major exponents of the movement (Rothko, Pollock, De Kooning, Kline, Newman...), explains their roots, how they turned New York into the art center of the world, what message they wanted to convey and also, the heritage and the limits of the movement. Many illustrations (most in black and white, unfortunately) help this book make for good, easy, and yet serious, reading.

abstract expressionisme
Great review of several artist,mainly well know ones.Most pictures are black and white.Author talks about individual paintings.Nice size pocket book to take or read any where.