Winner, Award of Merit for Non-Fiction, The Philosophical Society of Texas, 2015 Before Abstract Expressionism of New York City was canonized as American postwar modernism, the United States was filled with localized manifestations of modern art. One such place where considerable modernist activity occurred was Texas, where artists absorbed and interpreted the latest, most radical formal lessons from Mexico, the East Coast, and Europe, while still responding to the state's dramatic history and geography. This barely known chapter in the story of American art is the focus of Midcentury Modern Art in Texas. Presenting new research and artwork that has never before been published, Katie Robinson Edwards examines the contributions of many modernist painters and sculptors in Texas, with an emphasis on the era's most abstract and compelling artists. Edwards looks first at the Dallas Nine and the 1936 Texas Centennial, which offered local artists a chance to take stock of who they were and where they stood within the national artistic setting. She then traces the modernist impulse through various manifestations, including the foundations of early Texas modernism in Houston; early practitioners of abstraction and non-objectivity; the Fort Worth Circle; artists at the University of Texas at Austin; Houston artists in the 1950s; sculpture in and around an influential Fort Worth studio; and, to see how some Texas artists fared on a national scale, the Museum of Modern Art's "Americans" exhibitions. The first full-length treatment of abstract art in Texas during this vital and canon-defining period, Midcentury Modern Art in Texas gives these artists their due place in American art, while also valuing the quality of Texan-ness that subtly undergirds much of their production.

Andrew Wyeth is one of the best loved and most widely recognized artists in American history, yet for much of his career he was reviled by the art world's critical elite. Rethinking Andrew Wyeth reevaluates Wyeth and his place in American art, trying to reconcile these two opposing images of the man and his work. In addition to surveying the American critical reception of Wyeth's art over the seven decades of his career, David Cateforis brings together a collection of essays featuring new critical and scholarly responses to the artist. Donald Kuspit's compelling psycho-philosophical interpretation of Wyeth exemplifies the possibility of new approaches to understanding his work that move beyond the Wyeth "curse," as do those of the other contributors to this volume - from the close analysis of Wyeth's technical means offered by Joyce Hill Stoner, to the adventuresome interpretive readings of individual Wyeth paintings advanced by Alexander Nemerov and Randall C. Griffin, the considerations of Wyeth's critical reception in historical context offered by Wanda M. Corn and Katie Robinson Edwards, and the connections of Wyeth to other canonical artists such as Francine Weiss' comparison of him to Robert Frost and Patricia Junker's linkage of Wyeth and Marcel Duchamp. Rethinking Andrew Wyeth includes an appendix with data from visitor surveys conducted at the Wyeth retrospectives in San Francisco in 1973 and Philadelphia in 2006. Illustrated throughout with both iconic and lesser-known examples of Wyeth's work, this book will appeal to academic, museum, and popular audiences seeking a deeper understanding and appreciation of Andrew Wyeth's art through its critical reception and interpretation. Edited by David Cateforis, with essays by David Cateforis, Wanda M. Corn, Katie Robinson Edwards, Randall C. Griffin, Patricia Junker, Donald Kuspit, Alexander Nemerov, Joyce Hill Stoner, and Francine Weiss. This volume's release coincides with an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 2014, Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In.

Richard Stout's legacy as an artist is broad, deep, and firmly moored to his Texas Gulf Coast origins. Born in Beaumont in 1934, he has been painting, sculpting, and teaching in Houston since 1957, in the process creating both an influential body of work and a committed national and international following among artists and collectors. Stout's expressionist oeuvre, possessing architectural structuralism with geometric precision, has found its place in prominent museum and private collections not only in Texas, but also nationally and internationally. His works have appeared in most major American exhibitions and have traveled to Europe, Australia, and Asia. In this, the first retrospective study of a career spanning one of the most tumultuous and formative periods in Texas art, the editors have gathered a critical examination and meticulously researched assessment of the evolution in the artist's style and approach. Richly illustrated with representative paintings and sculptures from throughout Stout's career, Sense of Home also provides a comprehensive biographical background, illuminating in multiple dimensions the life and work of one of Texas' most significant contemporary artists.