Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art (Hardcover)

~ Vincent Katz (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Serving between 1933 and 1956 as a meeting point for some of the most imaginative artists, composers and writers of the period, Black Mountain College in southwestern North Carolina continues to exist as the mythical artistic birthplace of everyone from John Cage to Robert Creeley. Poet Vincent Katz curated a Black Mountain exhibition for Madrid's Reina Sofia museum, and here presents the school through a wonderful review of the artworks it produced and the varied geniuses who produced them. Artists Josef Albers, Kenneth Noland, Willem de Kooning and Franz Klein; dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham; poets Charles Olson and John Wieners; composers Lou Harrison and Stefan Wolpe; the unclassifiable Buckminster Fuller-all were integral to the tiny institution (about 50 students at any one time) and its practice-based curricula. Works by lesser known artists like Ilya Bolotowsky Theodoros Stamos acquire a further depth when placed among those by more familiar names, like Robert Motherwell. Candid photos are a highlight: the snapshot of painter Helen Frankenthaler and Ab-Ex critical proponent Clement Greenberg swimming in an onrushing ocean current would seem allegorical, if not for its immediacy. In the space of two covers, Katz manages to evoke a world of cross-media artistic possibility that seems as vast as it was often joyous.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...Wide-ranging and elegantly wistful..."
— Hilarie M. Sheets, ArtNews

"A fine and full-bodied tribute to one of our nation's most unique experiments in art."
— Will Clemens, Rain Taxi

"A welcome complement to the available literature on Black Mountain College."
— Janis Ekdahl, Art Documentation

"Katz gets at the catalytic complexity of an institution that stands at the crossroads of mid-twentieth-century American experimentation."
— Jed Perl, The New Republic

"Katz methodically examines (Black Mountain College's) personnel and draws connections between them."
— Christopher Benfey, The New York Times Book Review

"The essays in Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art contribute new evidence about what made the campus so artistically fecund."
— John P. Bowles, Art in America

"Vincent Katz's new volume should go to the top of our reading list on the subject...a tour de force."
— Rob Neufeld, Ashville Citizen Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; illustrated edition edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262112795
• ISBN-13: 978-0262112796
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 9.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #550,050 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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