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Abstract Expressionism: Works on Paper : Selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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In 1940's New York, a handful of artists from varied backgrounds began producing work equal to the finest of the European avant garde. Although these artists worked in a wide variety of individual styles, all of them were connected by a similar belief in the ability of art to communicate fundamental truths about human psychology and experience. Drawing on mythological and psychological sources, and inspired by the presence of many members of the exiled European avant garde in New York, this small group of men and women created the first wholly American modernist style, Abstract Expressionism. From the mid-1940's until the ascendancy of Pop Art in the early 1960's, Abstract Expressionism was the most important movement in the Western art world, and one which remains influential even today. While the paintings of the Abstract Expressionists are the movement's best-known works, drawing was a fundamental means of communication for these artists. This book documents a small but exquisite exhibition of drawings held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You will find exemplary works from the "big names" (Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko, Willem de Kooning) reproduced here, along with important drawings by less well-known artists like Theodoros Stamos, Anne Ryan, and Mark Tobey. The diverse selection of works provides a broader overview of Abstract Expressionism than is usually seen in the art world, which has tended over the past few decades to discuss the movement through monographic exhibitions focussing on its most famous practitioners. This handsome volume restores coherency to the Abstract Expressionist story. It seems that art like this - both formally and conceptually serious - has vanished from the contemporary American scene, which has chosen to either follow the Warhol/Duchamp route of easy, jokey satire, or the equally easy road of explicit and didactic politics. This books documents a world where artists were still capable of taking painting in directions which explored the labyrinth of the mind and extended perception into new realms. An inspiring work of art history.