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Publisher's Weekly Review
Ross ( Phantasmagorey: The Work of Edward Gorey ) here compiles statements, interviews, essays and letters written by abstract expressionists and their critics between 1940 and the early 1970s. Barnett Newman vehemently defends his opinions of aesthetics and politics, Ad Reinhardt jots down lists of contradictory symbols and ideas to help him think through his work, sculptor David Smith discusses and analyzes his working habits in a straightforward and conversational tone. Each chapter is devoted to a particular artist and includes black-and-white photos of him and his work--only men are included here. Critical viewpoints are offered via essays by Clement Greenberg and Randall Jarell and mixed reviews of the Manhattan Museum of Modern Art exhibition ``The New American Painting'' that traveled throughout Europe during 1958-1959 and featured paintings by 17 prominent artists. The book's small, easily digestible doses of rhetoric successfully define the abstract expressionist ideology according to personalities who are by turns eloquent, pompous and blunt. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Choice Review
Ross collects the canonical writings of the canonical figures of abstract expressionism. Artists include de Kooning, Motherwell, Newman, Pollock, Reinhardt, and Rothko; among the critics represented are Rosenberg, Greenberg, Schapiro, Rosenblum, and Kramer. A few short excerpts, largely taken from European reviews, caricature benighted reactions to American innovation and serve as a foil to the perspicuity of those who embraced the movement. The volume is handsomely produced, with excellent quality color and black-and-white plates of the paintings and full-page portraits of each of the artists. It eulogistically confirms the conventional presentation of abstract expressionism, (and, implicitly, creativity) as exclusively the domain of the white, New York City male. Alternative perspectives on the movement, such as Serge Guilbaut's How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art (1983), might have been included, at least in a bibliography--which is unfortunately lacking. For advanced undergraduate and graduate students. -A. J. Wharton, Duke University