The Whitney Museum in New York stands out as a leading institution dedicated to 20th-century American art, highlighting significant works and artists that define this transformative period. It serves as a vital cultural hub, providing insight into the evolution of American artistic expression and its impact on the broader art world. The museum's collection and exhibitions reflect diverse styles and movements, making it an essential destination for art enthusiasts and scholars alike.
Many American artists throughout the 20th century designated Pablo Picasso as the central figure of the modern movement and defined their own artistic achievements through their absorption, critique, or rejection of his example. Picasso and American Art is a groundbreaking publication juxtaposing works by Picasso with the paintings, sculptures, and drawings created in response by an extremely diverse group of his contemporaries and successors, including Max Weber, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, David Smith, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. Based on extensive research, Michael FitzGerald's text provides valuable new information on the fundamental role that Picasso played in the development of modern American art--both through his friendships with individual artists and through the dissemination of his evolving work. This book also documents, for the first time, the accessibility of Picasso's work in the United States between 1911 and 1957 in exhibitions, collections, and publications through a comprehensive chronology. This unique book is essential for anyone interested in either Picasso or American art of the 20th century.
This is the first complete survey of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a key member of a group of New York artists that included Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, who used the powerful images of graffiti to create a new expressive language. Essays by Dick Hebdige, Klaus Kertess and others. 200 illustrations, including 160 colorplates.
By the time of his death from AIDS at the age of 31, Keith Haring (1958-1990) was already a wildly successful and popular artist. Haring's original and instantly recognizable style, full of thick black lines, bold colors, and graffiti-inspired cartoon-like figures, won him the appreciation of both the art world and the general public; his work appeared simultaneously on T-shirts, gallery walls, and public murals. In 1986, Haring founded Pop Shop, a boutique in New York's SoHo selling Haring-designed memorabilia, to benefit charities and help bring his work closer to the public and especially street kids, with whom he never lost contact.
00 Edward Hopper's canvasses are filled with stripped-down spaces and unrelenting light, evocative landscapes, and the lonely aspects of men and women seemingly isolated in their surroundings. What kind of man had this haunting vision, and what kind of life engendered this art? No one is better qualified to answer these questions than art historian Gail Levin, author and curator of the major studies and exhibitions of Hopper's work. In this intimate biography she reveals the true nature and personality of the man himself--and of the woman who shared his life, the artist Josephine Nivison. Edward Hopper's canvasses are filled with stripped-down spaces and unrelenting light, evocative landscapes, and the lonely aspects of men and women seemingly isolated in their surroundings. What kind of man had this haunting vision, and what kind of life engendered this art? No one is better qualified to answer these questions than art historian Gail Levin, author and curator of the major studies and exhibitions of Hopper's work. In this intimate biography she reveals the true nature and personality of the man himself--and of the woman who shared his life, the artist Josephine Nivison.
An exciting guide to, and celebration of, the Whitney Museum and its outstanding collection of American art This all-new handbook, a fresh look at the Whitney Museum of American Art's collection, highlights the museum's extraordinary holdings and its fascinating history. Featuring iconic pieces by artists such as Calder, Hopper, Johns, O'Keeffe, and Warhol--as well as numerous works by under-recognized individuals--this is not only a guide to the Whitney's collection, but also a remarkable primer on modern and contemporary American art. Beautifully illustrated with abundant new photography, the book pairs scholarly entries on 350 artists with images of some of their most significant works. The museum's history and the evolution of its collection, including the Whitney's important distinction as one of the few American museums founded by an artist, and the notion of "American" in relation to the collection, are covered in two short essays. Published to coincide with the Whitney's highly anticipated move to a new facility in downtown New York in the spring of 2015, this book celebrates the museum's storied past and vibrant present as it looks ahead to its future.
