April Gornik [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Donald Kuspit (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 2004

Influenced by predecessors both in America and abroad, from the Luminists to Vermeer, Gornik's canvases - panoramic, majestic, and richly coloured - convey what critic Donald Kuspit calls, 'an original, fresh experience of nature'. This monograph includes lists of exhibitions, collections and a bibliography.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Hudson Hills Press; illustrated edition edition (December 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555952038
• ISBN-13: 978-1555952037
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 11.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,121,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Feast for eye and Mind, February 15, 2005

By 

P. Nagy "revreader" (Chapel Hill, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: April Gornik (Hardcover)

April Gornik Essay by Donald Kuspit, Conversation with the artist by Dede Young (Hudson Hills Press) is the first comprehensive overview of renowned artist April Gornik's paintings and drawings. This handsomely produced and richly illustrated volume presents a visual history of her work and tracks the development of her signature style.
For more than 20 years, April Gornik's ethereal landscapes have combined a devotion to light with the intellectual curiosity to explore and the skill to portray it. Influenced by predecessors both in America and abroad, from the Luminists to Vermeer, Gornik's canvases-panoramic, majestic, richly colored-convey what critic Donald Kuspit calls "an original, fresh experience of nature," and what Gornik herself calls "an aesthetic fiction:" a constructed view of nature addressing the philosophical and aesthetic needs of our time.
Haunted by images drawn from dreams and travel, the artist works to assemble compositions surreal in their presence, yet strangely moving in their exceptional spirituality. Using painting to reach what she finds spiritually and psychologically compelling, Gornik works to create an art not only of visual appeal, but one which, as she recounts in the volume's interview with curator Dede Young, engages the mind as well.
This monograph is published in conjunction with the exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, where Dede Young is the curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Donald Kuspit is one of America's most distinguished art critics, and the author of several books including Steve Tobin's Natural History.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Insightful and Spiritual Love of the Land, December 7, 2005

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: April Gornik (Hardcover)

April Gornik has quietly been practicing her art for many years, never distracted by trends or politico-social climes. She just creates landscapes of extraordinary simplicity and beauty. Whether focusing on a single tree or a glance at a minute detail of nature or a panoramic view of the vastness of landscape that begins and ends only where the eye dictates, Gornik intuitively understands the grand life cycle and the secrets and miracles of the land. She is an enormously accomplished artist.

In this fine monograph, to my knowledge the first major book beyond museum small catalogues to explore Gornik's gifts, the fine contributions by renowned art historian and commentator Donald Kuspit embellish the generous number of full color illustrations. Gornik's own intensely personal views are warmly related in an interview with Dede Young, a curator at Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York.

But as always with fine art the emphasis is on the visual and this book offers some of the more beautifully rendered reproductions of Gornik's paintings ever published. Hudson Hills Press is responsible for this excellent publication, one of the better art monographs of the year. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, December 05

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars April Gornik's stunningly impressive ethereal landscapes, May 10, 2005

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: April Gornik (Hardcover)

April Gornik: Paintings And Drawings is a collaboration between the Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, New York) and the Hudson Hills Press. Featuring an informative essay Fictional Freedom: April Gornik's Landscapes by distinguished art critic Donald Kuspit, and a conversation by Dede Young (curator of Modern and contemporary Art for the Neuberger Museum of Art) with April Gornik on and about here work, this superbly presented 167-page monograph beautifully showcases April Gornik's stunningly impressive ethereal landscapes, flawless technical skills, and her own unique "inner eye" as an artist revealing here aesthetic interpretation of natural images. Additionally enhanced with listings of exhibitions, collections, awards, bibliography, and an index, April Gornik is an important, core addition to personal and academic 20th Century Art History collections.