A01=Kirk Varnedoe
Abstract art
abstract art: "abstraction" and
Abstract expressionism
abstract expressionism: as American art
Adolf von Hildebrand
Aerial perspective
Aestheticism
allover composition
American art: abstract expressionism as
analytic cubism
Andy Warhol
Annie Hall
Anti-art
Art and Illusion
Art history
Author_Kirk Varnedoe
Barnett
Barnett Newman
Bauhaus
body: Hesse's art and
body: Hesse’s art and
Braque
Brice Marden
Calligraphy
Carl Andre
Category=AGA
Cezanne
chance: Cage and
Classicism
Clement
Clement Greenberg
Clyfford Still
composition: allover
Constantin Brancu?i
Cubism
Cy Twombly
Dada
Dan Flavin
David Sylvester
de Kooning
Donald Judd
Drip painting
Edvard Munch
Ellsworth Kelly
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Ernst Gombrich
European art
Eva Hesse
Feminist art
Figurative art
Fine art
Frank Stella
Geometric abstraction
Georges
Gerhard Richter
Greenberg
Hazlitt
history of art: abstraction and
Illusionism (art)
J. M. W. Turner
J.M.W.
Jackson
Jackson Pollock
Jasper Johns
Josef Albers
Kirk Varnedoe
Lacquer
Lecture
Levine
Marcel Duchamp
Mark
Mark Rothko
Max Bill
Michael Fried
Minimalism
Modern art
Modernism
National Gallery of Art
New Thought
New York: abstract expressionism in
Newman
nonobjective art
Pablo
Pablo Picasso
Paul
Peter Eisenman
Peter Halley
Picasso
Pollock
Pop art
pop art: emergence of
Postmodernism
process of art making
Rachel Lachowicz
Rachel Whiteread
Rauschenberg
realism
Reductive art
Richard Serra
Robert
Robert Rauschenberg
Rothko
Roy Lichtenstein
Satire
Sherrie
Sherrie Levine
Smithsonian Institution
Sol LeWitt
Terry Winters
Turner
unconscious
universal truths
Untitled (Lead Checks:
Whitney Museum of American Art
Willem
Willem de Kooning
William
Work of art
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Product details
- ISBN 9780691126784
- Weight: 1474g
- Dimensions: 229 x 241mm
- Publication Date: 29 Oct 2006
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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"What is abstract art good for? What's the use--for us as individuals, or for any society--of pictures of nothing, of paintings and sculptures or prints or drawings that do not seem to show anything except themselves?" In this invigorating account of abstract art since Jackson Pollock, eminent art historian Kirk Varnedoe, the former chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, asks these and other questions as he frankly confronts the uncertainties we may have about the nonrepresentational art produced in the last five decades. He makes a compelling argument for its history and value, much as E. H. Gombrich tackled representation fifty years ago in Art and Illusion, another landmark A. W. Mellon Lectures volume. Realizing that these lectures might be his final work, Varnedoe conceived of them as a statement of his faith in modern art and as the culminating example of his lucidly pragmatic and philosophical approach to art history. He delivered the lectures, edited and reproduced here with their illustrations, to overflowing crowds at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in the spring of 2003, just months before his death.
With brilliance, passion, and humor, Varnedoe addresses the skeptical attitudes and misunderstandings that we often bring to our experience of abstract art. Resisting grand generalizations, he makes a deliberate and scholarly case for abstraction--showing us that more than just pure looking is necessary to understand the self-made symbolic language of abstract art. Proceeding decade by decade, he brings alive the history and biography that inform the art while also challenging the received wisdom about distinctions between abstraction and representation, modernism and postmodernism, and minimalism and pop. The result is a fascinating and ultimately moving tour through a half century of abstract art, concluding with an unforgettable description of one of Varnedoe's favorite works.
Kirk Varnedoe(1946-2003) was Professor of Art History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 2001 until his death. From 1989 to 2001 he was chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For many years he taught at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. His many books and exhibition catalogues include "A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art Modern" and, with Adam Gopnik, "High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture".
