Clyfford Still (1904-1980), best known for his compelling abstract works with jagged fields and powerful expanses of color, stands among the giants of post-World War II art. Together with his peers Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, Still helped shape the new vision of art that came to be called Abstract Expressionism. This vividly illustrated book presents more than thirty of Still's greatest works, paintings that represent the full flowering of his style. 
The contributors to this volume explore various aspects of Still's art, his accomplishments, and the Abstract Expressionism movement. David Anfam presents an overview of Still's career from the 1930s through 1950s. Brooks Adams examines Still's artistic legacy and influence on succeeding generations of artists. And Neal Benezra's chapter focuses on a provocative, unexplored element of Still's studio practice: his habit of painting replicas of many of his own works. 
This book accompanies an exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., from 21 June through 16 September, 2001. The exhibition will offer an unprecedented opportunity to view outstanding examples of Still's work, many of which have not been on public display for decades.

Clyfford Still: Paintings, 1944 - 1960

Arts & Photography

Neal Benezra

David Anfam

Brooks Adams

History & Criticism

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

This handsome book features 63 paintings, sculptures, and drawings from The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, which was recently given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it will be exhibited beginning in September 2007. Long recognized for its preeminent Abstract Expressionist works, the collection includes major canvases by the great painters of the movement, among them De Kooning, Pollock, and Rothko, and sculptures by David Smith. Also featured are Morris Louis, Noland, Oldenburg, and other Americans of the succeeding generation as well as a selection of works by early European modernists such as Arp, Giacometti, Léger, and Miró. With color illustrations throughout, the book features texts by 22 leading scholars, including David Anfam, Diane Kelder, and Richard Shiff.

Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

History

Metropolitan Museum of Art

While legendary artist Jackson Pollock has been comprehensively investigated in recent shows, a focused exhibition examining his drawings has not been organized since 1980. No Limits, Just Edges: Jackson Pollock Paintings on Paper features a compelling group of 75 artworks drawn from the holdings of institutions and private collections worldwide. Curated by Susan Davidson, this long-awaited exhibition to be held at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Guggenheim Bilbao and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice considers the artist's works on paper as an essential component in his signature transformation of the traditional figurative line into a non-figurative graphic expression. This catalogue of the exhibiton begins chronologically with Pollock's early sketchbook studies based on old master paintings by Michelangelo and El Greco, as well as those influenced by his contemporaries, mainly the Mexican muralists Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. These early works reveal a figurative treatment that Pollock ultimately rejected as he moved at first toward pieces that mirrored his advancements in painting, and eventually, by late 1947, to abstract compositions. Throughout his career, Pollock experimented with different media on paper, alternating the same themes on watercolor and lithography, and later adding gouache to engravings to provide interesting variations. In the last years of his life, Pollock's fascination with different types of paper led him to special handmade sheets that allowed the paint to permeate below the main layer, thus achieving fortuitous variations of his well-known poured painting technique. This fully illustrated catalogue, which shows the full range of Pollock's works on paper, includes a reassessment of his skills as a draftsman by David Anfam, a noted scholar of Abstract Expressionism. Susan Davidson contributes a text that focuses on Pollock's stylistic development and the reception of his works on paper during his lifetime. A technical analysis of Pollock's working method is provided by Margaret Hoben Ellis.

No Limits, Just Edges: Jackson Pollock

Susan Davidson

Margaret Ellis

Guggenheim Museum

Deemed the "foremost sculptor of his generation" by art critic Clement Greenberg, David Smith, who lived from 1906 to 1965, is about to be celebrated in his first retrospective since 1969--to be held at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, from February through May of 2006. David Smith: A Centennial features new photographs of nearly every selected sculpture--110 pieces dating from 1932 to 1965, including important examples from each period, many rarely seen in public. Essays from writers including David Anfam, Michael Brenson, Rosalind Krauss and Paul Hayes Tucker tackle key areas, such as Smith's relationship to the painters of the New York School, the dual development of his family life and series sculpture through the 1950s and 60s, and his use of the landscape outside his studio in formulating his late works. Perhaps most importantly, David Smith: A Centennial also features the most comprehensive research on Smith yet published, including a newly compiled and extended bibliography; a comprehensive exhibition history; a chronology; and an illustrated checklist tracking provenance, exhibition history, and bibliographic references for each featured sculpture, finally bringing scholarship on Smith to the level of that on other important American artists of his generation, such as Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. David Smith: A Centennial considers Smith's oeuvre as a totality, and offers readers the chance to understand the complexity of his aesthetic concerns as well as his impact on the course of American sculpture, and American art at large.

David Smith: A Centennial

Rosalind Krauss

David Smith

Carmen Giménez

Individual Artists

Image of the Not Seen: Search for Understanding

Christopher Rothko

Ashton Dore et al Rothko

Rothko Chapel

Milton Avery: Works on Paper

Imprint unknown

Howard Hodgkin.

Gagosian

The Figure in Process: de Kooning to Kapoor, 1955-2015

Pivot Art + Culture

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) made the visual iconography of the American city his own. All-night diners, filling stations, motel rooms and office interiors take on the foreboding atmosphere of abandoned stage sets, onto which his isolated human protagonists seem to have wandered. Fully illustrated in colour, with oils, etchings, drawings and watercolours from throughout his career, and with essays by leading authorities on American art, this is a comprehensive survey of one of the iconic artists of the twentieth century.

Edward Hopper

Brian O'Doherty

Sheena Wagstaff

Tate

Abstract Expressionism: A world elsehwere

Haunch of Venison

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Books by David Anfam