Art In America 1945 - 1970: Writings from the Age of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism

(Hardback)

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In the quarter century after the end of World War II, a new generation of painters, sculptors, and photographers transformed the face of America art and shifted the centre of the art world from Paris to New York. This revolution generated an exuberant and contentious body of writing without parallel in our cultural history. Jed Perl has gathered the best of this writing together for the first time, interwoven with fascinating headnotes that establish the nature of the aesthetic battles that defined the era.

Reviews

"It's a plump, unbuttoned and convivial book, streaked like bacon with gossip and cogitation. . . . [Mr. Perl] is interested in the era's tumult, its howls and murmurs, its wolf whistles and rebel yells. He has raided memoirs, magazines and interviews for material; he's also rummaged through forgotten pamphlets and yellowed correspondence. This is a party that spills out onto the lawn." Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"Every student ought to have a copy in the studio or carrel. . . . For readers generally concerned about art, Art in America is likely to remain essential for quite a while." Wall Street Journal

"A powerhouse time capsule of a singular era. Jed Perl's masterful compilation of interviews, diaries, and essays from the post-war legends of word (Capote, Sontag, Kerouac) and image (Warhol, Avedon, Frank) reads like the dinner party of a lifetime." B&N Review

"In this fascinating anthology Jed Perl has given narrative shape and structure to a wide range of voices: poets, artists themselves, and various other articulate observers of the amazing metamorphoses of postwar American art. What emerges is surely one of the defining records of our artistic age." John Ashbery

"Jed Perl has compiled an invigorating panorama of art writing from a crucial quarter century, adding vital context with his incisive commentaries. As today's art writers suffer diminishing visibility, the pleasures to be had exploring this collection comes as a salutary shock. An unexpectedly compulsive read." Elizabeth C. Baker, editor-at-large, Art in America magazine

"Wondrous. . . . A singular book." Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News

Perl is a fiercely fluent word-spinner, with a staggering knowledge of American artists and their critics. John Updike

Author Bio

JED PERL is the art critic for The New Republic. A former contributing editor at Vogue, he has written on contemporary art for a variety of publications, including The New York Times Book Review and Elle, and is the author of New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century (2005), Eyewitness: Reports from an Art World in Crisis (2000), Gallery Going: Four Seasons in the Art World (1991), and Paris Without End: On French Art Since World War I (1988). He teaches art history at the New School.