Tracing the relationship between Abstract Expressionist artists and contemporary intellectuals, particularly the French existentialists, Nancy Jachec here offers a new interpretation of the success of America's first internationally recognized avant-garde art form. She argues that Abstract Expressionism was promoted by the United States government because of its radical character, which was considered to appeal to a Western European populace perceived by the State Department as inclined toward Socialism.

"As Cotkin shows, not only did Americans readily take to existentialism, but they were already heirs to a rich tradition of thinkers - from Jonathan Edwards and Herman Melville to Emily Dickinson and William James - who had wrestled with the problems of existence and the contingency of the world long before Sartre and his colleagues. After introducing the concept of an American existential tradition, Cotkin examines how formal existentialism first arrived in America in the 1930s through discussion of Kierkegaard and the early vogue among New York intellectuals for the works of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus.

A collection of articles, reviews and essays that chronicle the history of the Abstract Expressionism movement.

This volume situates the work of American poet Charles Olson (1910-1970) at the centre of the early post-war American avant-garde. It shows Olson to have been one of the major advocates and theorists of American modernism in the late 1940s and early 1950s; a poet who responded fully and variously to the political, ethical, and aesthetic urgencies driving innovation across contemporary American art. Reading Olson's work alongside that of contemporaries associated with the New York Schools of painting and music (as well as the exiled Frankfurt School), the book draws on Olson's published and unpublished writings to establish an original account of early post-war American modernism. The development of Olson's work is seen to illustrate two primary drivers of formal innovation in the period: the evolution of a new model of political action pivoting around the radical individual and, relatedly, a powerful new critique of instrumental reason and the Enlightenment tradition. Drawing on extensive archival research and featuring readings of a wide range of artists including, prominently, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Wolfgang Paalen, and John Cage, Charles Olson and American Modernism offers a new reading of a major American poet and an original account of the emergence of post-war American modernism.

Gabriel Rockhill opens new space for rethinking the relationship between art and politics. Rather than understanding the two spheres as separated by an insurmountable divide or linked by a privileged bridge, Rockhill demonstrates that art and politics are not fixed entities with a singular relation but rather dynamically negotiated, sociohistorical practices with shifting and imprecise borders. Radical History and the Politics of Art proposes a significant departure from extant debates on what is commonly called "art" and "politics," and the result is an impressive foray into the force field of history, in which cultural practices are meticulously analyzed in their social and temporal dynamism without assuming a conceptual unity behind them. Rockhill thereby develops an alternative logic of history and historical change, as well as a novel account of social practices and a multidimensional theory of agency. Engaging with a diverse array of intellectual, artistic, and political constellations, this tour de force diligently maps the various interactions between different dimensions of aesthetic and political practices as they intertwine and sometimes merge in precise fields of struggle.

Since the 1970s, it has been argued that Abstract Expressionism was exhibited abroad by the post-war US establishment in an attempt to culturally match and reinforce its newfound economic and military dominance. The account of Abstract Expressionism developed by the American critic Clement Greenberg is often identified as central to these efforts. However, this book rereads Greenberg's account through Theodor Adorno and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in order to contend that Greenberg's criticism in fact testifies to how Abstract Expressionism opposes the ends to which it was deployed. With reference not only to the most famous artists of the movement, but also female artists and artists of colour whom Greenberg himself neglected, such as Joan Mitchell and Norman Lewis, it is argued that, far from reinforcing the capitalist status quo, Abstract Expressionism engages corporeal and affective elements of experience dismissed or delegitimated by capitalism, and promises a world that would do justice to them.

"The biography recounts Rosenberg's full story for the first time. Art critic for The New Yorker from 1962 until 1978, Rosenberg, together with Clement Greenberg, radically reshaped the interpretation of art in the post-World-War-II period by promoting and examining abstract expression. But Rosenberg was also a social and literary critic-writing about art was just one aspect of his work. Harold Rosenberg: A Critic's Life weaves together Rosenberg's life and literary production, cast against the dynamic intellectual and social ferment of his time. Rosenberg's mid-century linking of the New York School with the art establishment, together with his observations on the commodification of the artwork and the evisceration of the "self" in favor of celebrity (especially in his often-cited essay "The Herd of Independent Minds") make this book especially topical"--

This book investigates the writings and works of the American Abstract Expressionist artist Barnett Newman in light of ideas articulated by one of Germany's most important and influential philosophers: Martin Heidegger. At the intersection of art history and philosophy, an int...

Diego Rivera, Dorothea Lange, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: Art and activism have long been intertwined, and the political fallout has resulted in an artistic canon riddled with historical holes. One of the most glaring omissions from most listings of American art masters is Ad Reinhardt (1913–67). An artist who had significant ties to the American Communist movement and leftist political organizations, Reinhardt and his contributions to modern art have been largely pushed out of the spotlight for political reasons. But in this unprecedented in-depth study of Reinhardt’s life and work, Michael Corris returns the artist to his rightful place in the history of modern art and culture. A pioneering avant-garde artist with fierce political beliefs, Reinhardt immersed himself in the vibrant left-wing political and cultural circles of the 1930s and ’40s, only to be marginalized by the social and cultural conservatism that arose in postwar America. Corris examines Reinhardt’s work against this historical background, charting the development of his entire oeuvre, ranging from his abstract paintings to his popular graphic artwork, illustrations and cartoons. Ad Reinhardt also re-evaluates Reinhardt’s role and influence in the art world, chronicling his time as an artist and educator at the California School of Fine Arts, University of Wyoming, Yale University, and Hunter College, and examining his influence on younger artists who created successive avant-garde movements such as minimal and conceptual art. A long-awaited examination of a less-heralded American master, Ad Reinhardt is a fascinating portrait of an artist whose political radicalism infused his art with a poignant resonance that stretches, through this rediscovery, into the present.

Situating ballet within twentieth-century modernism, this book brings complexity to the history of George Balanchine's American neoclassicism. It intervenes in the prevailing historical narrative and rebalances Balanchine's role in dance history by revealing the complex social, cultural, and political forces that actually shaped the construction of American neoclassical ballet.