Gustave Caillebotte

A stunning study of the life and work of Gustave Caillebotte-until recently the "forgotten man" of Impressionism but now recognized as one of the most interesting and attractive artists in the group and as the painter of some of its most powerful and memorable images. The book includes beautiful color reproductions of all Caillebotte's most important works, his working drawings, and a selection of critical responses to his art when first shown.

Arts & Photography

Kirk Varnedoe

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

"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.

Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock (The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts)

Princeton University Press

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) is widely considered as the most challenging and influential American artist of the 20th century. This sumptuous book offers a fresh overview of his achievement, reinterpreted for a new generation. Published to coincide with an exhibition opening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in October of 1998. 318 illustrations, 218 in color. 9 foldouts.

Jackson Pollock

Museum of Modern Art

Presenting nine critical essays by leading scholars--among them T.J. Clark, Robert Storr, James Coddington, Rosalind Krauss, and Kirk Varnedoe--this collection offers dramatically different ways of understanding Jackson Pollock's art and influence. Revealing not just the richness of Pollock's work, but also the vitality and diversity of contemporary criticisms, these texts discuss the crisis of easel painting, Pollock's relationship with his wife, artist Helen Frankenthaler, the Americanization of Europe, and the place of chaos in Pollock's work. Based on a symposium held in 1999 during The Museum of Modern Art, New York's retrospective exhibition of Pollock's oeuvre, this volume is a companion to Jackson Pollock: Key Interviews, Articles, and Reviews, a collection of older texts by or about the artist.

Jackson Pollock: New Approaches (Museum of Modern Art Books)

Harry N. Abrams

Picasso

Pepe Karmel

Book by Kirk Varnedoe, Terence Riley, Peter Reed, Mirka Benes

Philip Johnson and The Museum of Modern Art (Studies in Modern Art 6)

Terence Riley

Peter Reed

Mirka Benes

Architecture

New York: Museum of Modern Art

Masterpieces from the David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection: Manet to Picasso

Masterpieces from the David and Peggy Rockefeller collection: Manet to Picasso

Distributed by H.N. Abrams

From Foreword: "The field of late nineteenth-century painting has been so extensively surveyed in recent years that it is unusual to be able to present a whole area of completely fresh, unfamiliar work of high quality from that period. Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting, 1880-1910 gives us such an opportunity. The somewhat special approach that was taken in organizing the exhibition should be made clear. Any survey of thirty active years of painting in five different countries will necessarily be limited. But while Northern Light, with ninety-four paintings representing the work of thirty-six artists, is selective in the obvious sense, our focus is more sharply defined. It was evident from the earliest consultation with our colleagues that an exhibition composed of selections made by curators in each of the five countries, broadly surveying the five national schools with a goal of arithmetic evenhandedness, while inviting for its dictionary-like qualities, would in the end do a great disservice to the art. Thus, while Kirk Varnedoe and his co-curator, Sarah Faunce, benefited from the guidance and generous cooperation of our colleagues in Scandinavia, the selection was approached without the obligation to be all-inclusive....The exhibition often contradicts national notions regarding paintings, artists, and relative importance. Certain artists of recognized merit...do not appear. In some cases, as in the regrettable absence of Jens Ferdinand Willumsen of Denmark, insurmountable conservation problems made it impossible for an artist's key pieces to travel. In general, however, the final selection reflects Professor Varnedoe's approach - to isolate works of particular styles and themes so that they might, as a group, offer a broad sampling of the artists of the period even as they illuminate the patterns of development he sees as central to Northern painting of the period...."

Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting, 1880-1910

Brooklyn Museum

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Books by Kirk Varnedoe