Dore Ashton – författare

Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), one of the leading American Abstract Expressionist painters, was also a theorist and exponent of the movement. His writing articulated the intent of the New York school - Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, and others - during a period when their work was often reviled for its departure from traditional representation. As founder of the "Documents of Modern Art" series (later renamed the "Documents of Twentieth-Century Art"), Motherwell gave modern artists a voice at a time when very few people understood their theories or work. This authoritative new edition of the artist's writings about art includes public lectures, essays, and interviews. Impeccably edited, with an informative introductory essay and rigorous annotation, it is illustrated with black-and-white images that elucidate Motherwell's writings.

An anthology of Pablo Picasso's statements about art

As the Washington Post says, "Dore Ashton brings the reader to the very core of Mark Rothko's art." She draws on her countless interviews with the artist- giving little credence to the false mythology surrounding his work- to take us to the heart of Rothko's painting, showing its derivation from his reading, travel, and thought.

With the emergence of Abstract Expressionism after World War II, the attention of the international art world turned from Paris to New York. Dore Ashton captures the vitality of the cultural milieu in which the New York School artists worked and argued and critiqued each other's work from the 1930s to the 1950s. Working from unsifted archives, from contemporary newspapers and books, and from extensive conversations with the men and women who participated in the rise of the New York School, Ashton provides a rich cultural and intellectual history of this period. In examining the complex sources of this important movement--from the WPA program of the 1930s and the influx of European ideas to the recognition in the 1950s of American painting on an international scale--she conveys the concerns of an extraordinary group of artists including Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Philip Guston, Barnett Newman, Arshile Gorky, and many others. Rare documentary photographs illustrate Ashton's classic appraisal of the New York School scene.

Dore Ashton has updated the bibliography and added a new concluding chapter to her classic study of the paintings and drawings of Philip Guston, the only study of his work completely authorized by the artist. Philip Guston (1913-1980) was one of the most independent of the painters whose work was loosely linked by the term "abstract expressionism" during the 1950s, and he baffled admirers of his lushly beautiful abstract expressionist paintings by moving abruptly in mid-career to gritty figurative paintings in an almost cartoon-like style. One of the few critics who saw this at the time as a progressive development in his work was Dore Ashton, who here analyzes Guston''s paintings and drawings in the context of the cultural milieu in which he worked, illuminating the dilemma facing artists who try to live with, understand, and express both the ideals of art and the reality of the world.This title was originally published in 1976. Dore Ashton has updated the bibliography and added a new concluding chapter to her classic study of the paintings and drawings of Philip Guston, the only study of his work completely authorized by the artist. Philip Guston (1913-1980) was one of the most