Arthur Dove: A Retrospective

(Paperback)

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The American artist Arthur Dove (1880-1946), purportedly the first artist to have produced an abstract painting, has always occupied a central place in writings on early American modernism. This book accompanies the first major exhibition on Dove since 1974. The exhibition, organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art and the Phillips Collection, covers the period from 1908, the year after Dove took up painting, through to 1946, the year of his death. It is comprised of approximately 80 paintings, collages, pastels, and charcoal drawings. Along with Georgia O'Keeffe and John Marin, Dove was touted for more than three decades by photographer and dealer Alfred Stieglitz as an American original, one whose work was prescient in its opposition to the materialism of a newly industrialized America. Essays by Balken, Agee, and Turner discuss Dove's interactions with Stieglitz and others in his circle, including O'Keeffe, Marin, Marsden Hartley, and Paul Strand, and re-examine Dove in the context of early 20th-century intellectual and cultural history. The book contains colour plates of all the works in the exhibition; the essays are illustrated with black-and-white images not included in the exhibition.

Author Bio

Debra Bricker Balken is an independent curator and writer who has organized numerous exhibitions on subjects relating to American modernism and contemporary art for major museums internationally. Her award-winning books include Philip Guston's Poor Richard (2001) and Abstract Expressionism- Movements in Modern Art (2005), as well as exhibition catalogues such as Arthur Dove, A Retrospective (1997), The Park Avenue Cubists (2003), Dove/O'Keeffe- Circles of Influence (2009), After Many Springs- Regionalism, Modernism and the Midwest (2009), John Storrs- Machine-Age Modernist (2010), and John Marin- Modernism at Midcentury (2011).