'What is abstract art good for? What's the use - for
us as individuals, or for any society - of pictures of
nothing, of paintings and sculptures or prints or
drawings that do not seem to show anything except
themselves?' In this invigorating account of abstract
art since Jackson Pollock, eminent art historian Kirk
Varnedoe, the former chief curator of painting and
sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, asks these and
other questions as he frankly confronts the
uncertainties we may have about the nonrepresentational
art produced in the last five decades.He makes a
compelling argument for its history and value, much as
E. H. Gombrich tackled representation fifty years ago in
Art and Illusion, another landmark A. W. Mellon Lectures
volume. Realizing that these lectures might be his final
work, Varnedoe conceived of them as a statement of his
faith in modern art and as the culminating example of
his lucidly pragmatic and philosophical approach to art
history. He delivered the lectures, edited and
reproduced here with their illustrations, to overflowing
crowds at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in
the spring of 2003, just months before his death.With
brilliance, passion, and humor, Varnedoe addresses the
skeptical attitudes and misunderstandings that we often
bring to our experience of abstract art.Resisting grand
generalizations, he makes a deliberate and scholarly
case for abstraction - showing us that more than just
pure looking is necessary to understand the self-made
symbolic language of abstract art. Proceeding decade by
decade, he brings alive the history and biography that
inform the art while also challenging the received
wisdom about distinctions between abstraction and
representation, modernism and postmodernism, and
minimalism and pop. The result is a fascinating and
ultimately moving tour through a half century of
abstract art, concluding with an unforgettable
description of one of Varnedoe's favorite works. |
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