Interviews with American Artists [Hardcover]

David Sylvester (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2001

David Sylvester has been called "the best living writer in English about modern art" (Daily Telegraph). With his expertise, sympathy, and provocative style, he is unique in his ability to talk freely with influential artists. This astounding book includes 21 interviews, recorded over the past forty years, with leading American artists. Together they illuminate all the great developments in American art. Here are the views of David Smith, Richard Serra, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, and more. Conversations from the 1960s vividly conjure up the New York art scene immediately after the war, when the newly arrived Europeans met the Americans who had worked together in the Depression, their different traditions colliding and fusing as they walked the city, talked and worked together. Others, like those with Carl Andre, Cy Twombly, Alex Katz, and Jeff Koons, speak straight from today. No one but Sylvester could have produced this intricate collage, this chorus of voices that blend to create one of the most revealing and unusual histories of American art in the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Phillip Guston, Jasper Johns and many other luminaries of postwar 20th-century art were part of a celebrated series of interviews British art critic David Sylvester (Looking at Giacometti) recorded for the BBC during the 1960s. Transcribed, edited and collected here as Interviews with American Artists (along with a handful of more recent interviews with Jeff Koons, Alex Katz, Cy Twombly, and others), the interviews transport readers back to a moment of boundless artistic confidence and possibility.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Sylvester, an intrepid and perceptive art critic and author of celebrated books on Giacometti and Francis Bacon, conducted a series of in-depth interviews with cutting-edge American artists for the BBC in the 1960s. Most of his conversations with such trailblazers as Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler, and Jasper Johns have never been published, and all make for fascinating reading as artists who prefer to express themselves with line, color, and form struggle to find words to describe their profoundly intuitive aesthetic choices, often to stunning effect. Abstract art was then new and astonishing, and it remains radical and mysterious, a state Sylvester's careful querying of the likes of sculptors Nevelson and Smith and painters Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Rauschenberg richly illuminates as his subjects reveal the rich complexity of their influences, intentions, and techniques. A series of recent interviews with Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, and Carl Andre, among others, highlights the ongoing vitality and diversity of American art, and all that readers will miss in the wake of Sylvester's recent death. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1St Edition edition (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300092040
• ISBN-13: 978-0300092042
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,074,288 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars required reading, May 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Interviews with American Artists (Hardcover)

This book is a treasure: a collection of previously unpublished interviews with luminaries of postwar American art, conducted by a sensitive master of the form. David Sylvester interviewed only artists he knew; his familiarity with their work, and his profound understanding of their aesthetic dilemmas, is evident throughout.

Most of the interviews in the volume were conducted between 1960 and 1967, and subsequently broadcast over the BBC. The usual "New York School" suspects are present and accounted for: de Kooning, Kline, Newman, Gottlieb, Johns, Rauschenberg, Motherwell, Frankenthaler, David Smith, et alia ... More recent interviewees include Cy Twombly, Jeff Koons, Carl Andre, and Richard Serra. Conducted over a three-year period, the interviews with Serra concerning his Torqued Ellipses are especially worthwhile. Additional biographical notes by Jonathan Shirland round out the book.

The interviews are characteristically intelligent, focused, and perceptive. One would expect nothing less from David Sylvester, whose probing interviews with Francis Bacon remain a key touchpoint for those interested in that modern artist's process. His slim book on Giacometti is nothing short of brilliant. The lengthier interviews contained herein further demonstrate the breadth of Sylvester's understanding -- and deepen our sense of loss at his recent passing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Their own words, December 25, 2009

By 

A. Davis "asdav" (Berkshires) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Interviews with American Artists (Hardcover)

Fantastic interviews, Sylvester playing the role of critic as professional fan, asking well-informed questions and letting the artists speak for themselves. Ab/Ex, Pop, Minimal, 80's, all these artists seem remarkably similar when discussing their creative processes rather than the specific nature of their work. I learned new respect for artists whose work I still don't love. I had my high opinions of others re-confirmed, or sometimes realized their art speaks better than they do. These interviews were conducted over many years so they are usually current with the particular artist's high-water mark. They do a great service by removing critical theory and jargon from the conversation, letting artists talk about what motivates their decisions and actions.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The friend of every artist's, April 8, 2007

By 

Claude Reich (Florianopolis, Brazil and Paris, France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Interviews with American Artists (Hardcover)

Having painters talk about their art is a difficult exercise. Some artists are notoriously reluctant, not because they have nothing to say, but because they think that once the work is out there it is up to the viewer to receive it with an open mind. David Sylvester manages to overcome this obstacle and makes us understand how each artist works, what he means or thinks when his brush meets the canvas or when his hands meet the metal. This is an irreplaceable book for anyone interested in modern American art.