Customer Reviews

Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976 (Jewish Museum)

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This is a magnificent artbook enriched by breakthrough studies on the most important movement in post-war American art, namely Abstract Expressionism (and its offshoots like color-field painting). Based on the intellectual rivalry between the two most famous critics of the period, Clement Greenberg (the advocate of abstraction, who insisted on the importance of the work of art versus the creative process, abstract art being the only valid modern form of art) and Harold Rosenberg (who coined the expression "action painting" in a 1952 article in Artnews and to whom what counted was the act of creating, more than the end product) it enables the reader to discover some of the most canonical works of the movement, by De Kooning, Pollock, Newman and many others, lavishly illustrated.

The book accompanies an exhibition held at the Jewish Museum in NYC (which will later go to St Louis) and is a trove of information and documents on the roots, the influences, the governing ideas, the artists' personalities and their reactions to the various opinions stated by Greenberg and Rosenberg on their art but also on the state of contemporary culture.

The reproductions of facsimile of letters are especially interesting, such as the ones Clyfford Still sent to Harold Rosenberg, first urging him to get into art criticism and then condemning him for doing so ("I am deeply disappointed" he ends up writing).

A landmark exhibition enlightened by this rich catalogue (a highlight is Irving Sandler's article on the convergences and divergences between Greenberg and Rosenberg)which I strongly recommend.

Catalog for a 2008 exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City, this monograph contains a good deal of interesting writing and illustration along with a couple of deflating examples of verbal pretentiousness which is tedious but not a spoiler. To avoid the repetitiveness inherent in yet another show of the same old guys (and a few gals), the focus was placed on the role of the two major creators of the myths of abstraction which impelled people to buying despite the opaqueness of the product. It can fairly be said, that without this myth-making, the rationales which made the abstraction seem meaningful, there could have been no surge of the excitement and buying which made New York City the Queen City of Art in the post-war period and most of the time since. Such writers as Keeblatt and Sandler, deeply involved with the movements in art of the period, and others with solid backgrounds, help us see what Greenberg and Rosenberg did to persuade the art community that Newman, de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, Kline, Motherwell, Guston and their confrères, had something that should be supported and cherished. On the whole, it is well done, with a few exceptions, accessible to the involved lay reader, and vital to understanding just what can get an art movement started.

With a major exhibition about to open at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, the art of the City from 1940 to 1970, will be given a thorough viewing by a relatively few who were there in the beginning and the many who have been educated to its virtues since.

This book is a commendable source of information to complement the exhibitions publication which I have not yet seen.

Action/Abstraction was an incredible exhibit. It covered a familiar time period and well-known artists, but from a wonderfully new perspective. If you are interested in the history of art history, I highly suggest spending some time reviewing this catalog.

There are very few works by Pollock or De Kooning in this book.The majority of illustrations and artists here are have nothing to "action painting". This book is more broad than that.Works of Expressionism,Popart,minimalism,and modern sculpture are all explored.