Serge Guilbaut (ed.): Reconstructing Modernism: Art in New York, Paris, and Montreal 1945-1964 (1990)

“These essays reopen the case of postwar abstraction. They constitute a dialogue among historians, critics, painters, and art historians that allows not only new readings of specific art works but also a new understanding of the reception of art in the postwar Western world.

Reconstructing Modernism takes up the complex relationship between art and politics in the postwar years, debating the reasons for the simultaneous development in Paris, Montreal, and New York of a type of ‘hot’ expressionist painting–variously called abstract expressionism, abstraction lyrique, automatisme–and its replacement by neodada and neocold abstraction in the early 1960s. Well-known works by Pollock, Warhol, Soulages, Fautrier, Rauschenberg, and Gabo are reassessed, and their meaning is reappraised according to the larger international artistic and political discourse.

The contributions cover a wide range of issues. Timothy J. Clark, Thierry de Duve, Constance Naubert-Riser, and Thomas Crow focus on specific works of major artists of the period. Laurie J. Monahan, Serge Guilbaut, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh look at art production in relation to particular aspects of the Cold War. Jean Baudrillard and François-Marc Gagnon discuss the effects of the international situation on the arts in general. John Franklin Koenig describes the experience of an American artist working in Paris after the war. John O’Brian relates the impact and the reception of Matisse’s work in New York, and Lary May discusses the transformation of Hollywood during the McCarthy era.”

Publisher MIT Press, 1990
ISBN 0262570920, 9780262570923
418 pages

WorldCat

PDF (146 MB)

“I Knew It To Be So!” Forrest Bess, Alfred Jensen, Myron Stout: Theory and the Visionary (1984)

Black-and-white catalogue for an exhibition curated by Lawrence Luhring and David Reed for the New York Studio School and Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA. With essays by John Yau, Luhring, Reed and Thomas Hudspeth.

25 pages
via David Reed (Special Projects)

John Yau on Forrest Bess, Part 2 (Hyperalergic, 2012)
Commentary on Bess’s hermaphrodism (Heidi Gustafson, 2014)

PDF

Donald Judd: Complete Writings, 1959-1975: Gallery Reviews, Book Reviews, Articles, Letters to the Editor, Reports, Statements, Complaints (1975)

Originally published in 1975, this collection of Donald Judd’s writings is now a sought-after classic. His uncompromising reviews avoid the familiar generalizations so often associated with the styles of emerging during the 1950s and 60s. This book is not a mere survey of the art produced and exhibited during that period. Instead, Judd discusses in detail the work of more than five hundred artists showing in New York at that time and provides a critical account of this significant era in American art. While addressing the social and political ramifications of art production, the writings focus on the work of Jackson Pollock, Kasimir Malevich, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, John Chamberlain, Larry Poons, Kenneth Noland, and Claes Oldenburg. His 1965 “Specific Objects” essay, a discussion of sculptural thought in the 60s, is included alongside the notorious polemical essay “Imperialism, Nationalism, Regionalism” (1975). Three hundred reproductions as well as an extensive index accompany the text.

Publisher Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, 1975
Nova Scotia series
ISBN 0919616070, 9780919616073
229 pages

publisher
google books

Download (removed on 2013-4-3 upon request of the publisher)