- Hardcover: 414 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 1992)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0671638572
- ISBN-13: 978-0671638573
- Product Dimensions: 23.9 x 15.7 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 998 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #943,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
This vibrant, intimate, gripping group portrait of American Abstract Expressionists shows how the anguish of their personal lives fed into their art. Kingsley, a Manhattan-based art critic and curator, focuses on 1950, the pivotal "year of greatest interaction" among Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and their associates, and the only year when they all lived and worked together in New York City. Their circle included the near-destitute Franz Kline, whose wife spent 14 years in a mental hospital; Robert Motherwell, who oscillated between "atavistic caveman" and Francophile sophisticate; sculptor David Smith, prone to domestic violence and abuse of women; and the mordantly romantic Arshile Gorky, whose wife left him shortly after an auto accident in which he suffered a broken neck and a paralyzed painting arm. Despite the outward differences between Pollock's famous drips and Barnett Newman's vertical "zip," these artists shared a desire to let content emerge directly from the psyche and a "desperation to speak through the medium of paint alone." Illustrated.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this excellent account of a decisive year in the history of 20th-century art and politics, art critic Kingsley does justice to all the elements of a very complex scene. Taking 1950 as the key year in the Abstract Expressionist movement, she describes month by month the gallery openings and social events involving many of the period's most important artists. Detailed discussions of the major paintings and a brief historic overview highlight each month's new developments, with the artists' biographies, artistic ideas, and spiritual searchings woven into a seamless narrative featuring especially poignant biographies of David Smith, Arshile Gorky, and Franz Kline. Kingsley's feminist perspective enriches her wonderful study. Highly recommended for most libraries.
- Gene Shaw, Elmwood Park Lib., N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Gene Shaw, Elmwood Park Lib., N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
...from ArtsyFartsy News, October 2008, Jan 25 2009
By Robert Burridge Studio - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Turning Point: The Abstract Expressionists and the Transformation of American Art (Hardcover)
First published in 1992, this book is both biography and art history. My favorite. It is a detailed account and monthly report of what, when, who and why on the birth of American Abstract Expressionism. It is almost a daily account of the beginning of the "New York School," including Pollock, Rothko, Kline and Gottlieb, thru to Motherwell, Still, Reinhardt and everyone else who were in their studios at the end of World War Two. Artists were full of exhilaration and anxiety as they broke free from the exhausted European art community. Matisse and Picasso were still the "anointed ones." American artists were snubbed by the European old guard - so in typical American fashion, they started their own movement. It was around the time when I was born, 1943.Many of these artists felt a missionary's zeal to reinvent what art should be. I am intrigued how they continued on with little or no money. Willem deKooning said, "We all had bad, hard times." I like how Elaine deKooning explained it, recalling earlier times: "We never considered ourselves poor. We just didn't have any money." Considering our current economy, this may be a timely book.
April Kingsley knew many of these artists personally. In her daily account, she interviewed every artist, spouse, friends and documented in detail, how and why they created their new art. I love this book and its history lesson.
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Turning Page, July 19 2010
By Corinne Whitaker "Digital Giraffe" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Turning Point: The Abstract Expressionists and the Transformation of American Art (Hardcover)
April Kingsley is the Director of the Kresge Art Museum in East Lansing, Michigan and a former art critic for The Village Voice in New York City. She writes clearly, engagingly, and knowledgeably about the women and men of this turbulent period in American art history. She brings a sense of humor to her profession: witness an exhibition that she curated called "Paintings That Paint Themselves, or so it seems". This same lively spirit fills her writing and makes "The Turning Point" a pleasure to read.Kingsley has a talent for avoiding art critic gibberish and long sentences filled with indecipherable phrases. Her writing flows as she moves from artist to artist, giving enough tantalizing personal history to encourage further research. I found the book fascinating and Kingsley's understanding of the ferments of the time compelling.
Corinne Whitaker
[...]
6 of 14 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
second-hand art lore isn't worth the read, Jun 10 1997
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Turning Point: The Abstract Expressionists and the Transformation of American Art (Hardcover)
This removed and often second-hand journal of the 1950s School of New York is a mostly dry read whose uncommon interesting whirls really resolve themselves like a flaky TV episode of Chuck Norris. Too often, these complex characters are conceived by the author as stereotypes of American fairytaledom. Their frailties are not well-enough addressed and sparsely dotted among habitual drone and American folk imagery. Elaine deKooning, Lee Krasner, and other groundbreaking artists of the time such as Frankenthaler and Hopper, who may not represent the core of the Expressionist flame, but nevertheless burned bright have been neglected alongside other surrounding artistic circumstances. Besides these prominent shortcomings, the author is also lacking in bravery of prose. This is not an exciting read, but it is adequate in that it does not defeat itself while getting across the vital struggle for serious contemplation of American Art in the 1950s. Certainly not a "turning point" in literature, it provides facts and lore in a predictable and easily understood manner
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