Experience the creative explosion that transformed American art, in the words of
the artists, writers, and critics who were there: In the quarter century after
the end of World War II, a new generation of painters, sculptors, and photograph
ers transformed the face of American art and shifted the center of the art world
from Paris to New York. Signaled by the triumph of abstraction and the ascendan
cy of painters such as Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, and Kline, this revolution g
enerated an exuberant and contentious body of writing without parallel in our cu
ltural history. In the words of editor Jed Perl, there has never been a period w
hen the visual arts have been written about with more mongrel energy with more u
nexpected mixtures of reportage, rhapsody, analysis, advocacy, editorializing, a
nd philosophy. Perl has gathered the best of this writing together for the first
time, interwoven with fascinating headnotes that establish the historical backg
round, the outsized personalities of the artists and critics, and the nature of
the aesthetic battles that defined the era. Here are statements by the most sign
ificant artists, and major critical essays by Clement Greenberg, Susan Sontag, H
ilton Kramer, and other influential figures. Here too is an electrifying array o
f responses by poets and novelists, reflecting the free interplay between differ
ent art forms: John Ashbery on Andy Warhol, James Agee on Helen Levitt, James Ba
ldwin on Beauford Delaney, Truman Capote on Richard Avedon, Tennessee Williams o
n Hans Hofmann, Jack Kerouac on Robert Frank. The atmosphere of the time comes t
o vivid life in memoirs, diaries, and journalism by Peggy Guggenheim, Dwight Mac
donald, Calvin Tomkins, and others. Lavishly illustrated with scores of black-an
d-white images and a 32-page color insert, this is a book that every art lover w
ill treasure."
