"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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