The Age of the Avant-garde, 1956-1972

Description

Hilton Kramer, well known as perhaps the most perceptive, courageous, and influential art critic in America, is also the founder and co-editor (with Roger Kimball) of The New Criterion. This comprehensive book collects a sizable selection of his early essays and reviews published in Artforum, Commentary, Arts Magazine, The New York Review of Books, and The Times, and thus constituted his first complete statement about art and the art world. The principal focus is on the artists and movements of the last hundred years: the Age of the Avant-Garde that begins in the nineteenth century with Realism and Impressionism. Most of the major artists of this rich period, from Monet and Degas to Jackson Pollock and Claes Oldenburg, are discussed and often drastically revaluated. A brilliant introductory essay traces the rise and fall of the avant-garde as a historical phenomenon, and examines some of the cultural problems which the collapse of the avant-garde poses for the future of art. In addition, there are chapters on art critics, museums, the relation of avant-garde art to radical politics, and on the growth of photography as a fine art. This collection is not intended to be the last word on one of the greatest as well as one of the most complex periods in the history of the artistic imagination. The essays and reviews gathered here were written in response to particular occasions and for specific deadlines--in the conviction that a start in the arduous task of critical revaluation needed to be made, not because a critical theory prescribed it but because our experience compelled it! Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Acknowledgments Contents INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION PREFACE I. The Age of the Avant-Garde II. The Nineteenth Century 1 The Turner Revival 2 The Radicalism of Courbet 3 Late Monet 4 The Conscience of Impressionism 5 Degas as Expressionist 6 Neo-Impressionism I Neo-Impressionism II 7 Odilon Redon: "The Medium of Mind" 8 Medardo Rosso 9 Simeon Solomon: Preview of a Revival 10 The Pre-Raphaelite Revival 11 Rediscovering Puvis de Chavannes 12 Aubrey Beardsley: The Erotic and the Exquisite 13 The Erotic Style 14 Whistler: Choosing London over Paris 15 Whistler in the Seminar Room 16 Mary Cassatt: An American in Paris 17 The Stratagems of Realism III. The Twentieth Century Germans and Other Northerners 1 Lovis Corinth 2 Edvard Munch 3 The Rebellion of Oskar Kokoschka 4 Egon Schiele 5 Nolde: An Aggrieved Solitary 6 Kirchner and Expressionism 7 Feininger: A Visionary Cubist 8 George Grosz: A Moral Recoil 9 Poet and Pedagogue: Paul Klee 10 Max Beckmann: "The Quality of Pulsating Life" 11 Kandinsky: Theosophy and Abstraction 12 Kandinsky: The Last Decade 13 Mondrian's Freedom 14 Moholy-Nagy 15 Rodchenko: Art in the Service of Revolution 16 Thinking about Tatlin 17 "The World of Art" in Exile 18 Oskar Schlemmer's Abstract Universe 19 Walter Sickert and the Malaise of English Painting 20 Epstein in London 21 Barbara Hepworth: From the Avant-Garde to the Establishment 22 Henry Moore: A Very English Romantic The School of Paris 1 Matisse: The Paintings 2 Matisse: The Sculpture 3 Bourdelle: The Age of Innocence 4 Vuillard 5 Bonnard's Drawings 6 Picasso's Radical Inventions 7 Picasso's "Guitar" 8 Were These Braque's "Great Years"? 9 Juan Gris 10 The Conversion of Julio Gonzalez 11 Laurens: "The Ripening of Forms" 12 Lipchitz's Eloquence 13 Chagall 14 Soutine and the Problem of Expressionism 15 Modigliani: Reconsidering a "Little Master" 16 Miró: Enchanted Objects 17 Arp: Purity of Heart, Purity of Form 18 The Two Archipenkos 19 Late Léger 20 Duchamp: Resplendent Triviality 21 Dali 22 Picabia's Dada Holiday 23 Torres-Garcia: Scenario of Exile 24 Giacometti Americans 1 Reflections on Lachaise 2 Prendergast 3 Marsden Hartley: The Return of the Native 4 The Loneliness of Arthur Dove 5 The Ordeal of Alfred Maurer 6 Introducing H. Lyman Sayen 7 Man Rays Self- Portrait 8 Arnold Friedman: "He Is Not a Pleasant Painter" 9 Charles Sheeler: American Pastoral 10 The Return of John Storrs 11 The Legendary John Graham 12 Walkowitz 13 Edward Hopper: An American Vision 14 The Sculpture of Saul Baizerman 15 Romaine Brooks 16 Arshile Gorky: Between Two Worlds 17 The Confidence of Milton Avery IV. Contemporaries 1 The Sculpture of David Smith 2 The Jackson Pollock Myth I The Jackson Pollock Myth II 3 Robert Motherwell I Robert Motherwell II 4 Willem de Kooning I Willem de Kooning II 5 Ad Reinhardt 6 Jean Dubuffet: Playing the Primitive 7 Hofmann in Perspective 8 Albers 9 Louise Nevelson 10 Joseph Cornell's Baudelairean "Voyage" 11 Balthus 12 The Problem of Francis Bacon 13 The Comic Fantasies of Saul Steinberg 14 Isamu Noguchi 15 "Homage to Trajan" 16 José de Rivera 17 Helioni Returning from the Absolute 18 Helen Frankenthaler: "The Landscape Paradigm" 19 Mark di Suvero 20 Anthony Caro 21 Frank Stella I Frank Stella II 22 Robert Morris: The Triumph of Ideas over Art 23 An Art of Boredom? 24 Claes Oldenburg 25 Matta: Style vs. Ideology 26 Prague: 1969 27 Jean Ipousteguy 28 Nicolas de Staël 29 Fairfield Porter: Against the Historical Grain 30 Expressionism plus Objects: The Art of Jim Dine 31 Lindner's Dream 32 The Futurism of Ernest Trova 33 Plebeian Figures, Banal Anecdotes: The Tableaux of George Segal 34 Philip Pearlstein 35 Ellsworth Kelly 36 Mary Frank 37 Richard Hunt 38 Leland Bell: Painting in the Shadow of the Museum 39 Dude-Ranch Dada 40 Anne Arnold's Peaceable Kingdom 41 Alex Katz 42 Comedies of Manners: Cecil Beaton and David Hockney 43 The Sculpture of William King V. The Art of Photography 1 The Classicism of Henri Cartier-Bresson 2 Edward Weston's Privy and the Mexican Revolution 3 Paul Strand 4 Bill Brandt 5 Walker Evans and Henri Carder-Bresson 6 From Fashion to Freaks: Diane Arbus VI. Critics 1 A Critic on the Side of History: Notes on Clement Greenberg 2 The Contradictions of Herbert Read 3 The Strange Case of Harold Rosenberg VII. Into the Seventies 1 "Information" 2 Art and Politics: Incursions and Conversions 3 Avant-Gardism 4 And Now . . . Pop Art: Phase II 5 William Bailey and the Artifice of Realism 6 Andy's "Mao" and Other Entertainments 7 The Return of "Handmade" Painting 8 Documenta 5: The Bayreuth of the Neo-Dadaists INDEX