On October 15, 1958, Sotheby's of Bond Street staged an event sale of seven Impressionist paintings belonging to Erwin Goldschmidt: three Manets, two Cézannes, one Van Gogh, and a Renoir. Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, and Somerset Maugham were there as celebrity guests. The seven lots went for 781,000--at the time the highest price for a single sale. The event established London as the world center of the art market and Sotheby's as an international auction house. It began a shift in power from the dealers to the auctioneers and paved the way for Impressionist paintings to dominate the market for the next forty years. Sotheby's had pulled off a massive coup by capturing the Impressionist market from Paris and New York--and now began its inexorable rise, opening offices all over the world. A huge expansion of the market followed, accompanied by rocketing prices, colorful scandals, and legal dramas. London transformed itself from a fusty place of old master painting sales to a revitalized center of contemporary art, crowned by the opening of Tate Modern in 2000. The Tate Modern successfully united new (and mostly foreign) money in London with the art world, offering its patrons a ready-made sophisticated social milieu alongside dealers in contemporary art. In a vibrant and briskly-paced style, James Stourton tells the story of the London art market from the immediate postwar period to the turn of the millennium. While Sotheby's is the lynchpin of this story, Stourton populates his narrative with a glorious rogue's gallery of eccentric scholars, clever amateurs, brilliant emigrés, and stylish grandees with a flair for the deal.

'Excellent.' - The New Yorker

The first publication dedicated to artists' zines in North America, a revelatory exploration of an unexamined but thriving aesthetic practice

Copy Machine Manifestos captures the rich history of artists' zines as never before, placing them in the lineage of the visual arts and exploring their vibrant growth over the past five decades.

Fully illustrated with hundreds of zine covers and interiors, alongside work in other media, such as painting, photography, film, video, and performance, the book also features brief biographies for more than 100 zine-makers including Beverly Buchanan, Mark Gonzales, G.B. Jones, Miranda July, Bruce LaBruce, Terence Koh, LTTR, Ari Marcopoulos, Mark Morrisroe, Raymond Pettibon, Brontez Purnell, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Kandis Williams.

Accompanying a major exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, this expansive book, bound as a paperback with a separate jacket, focuses on zines from North America, celebrating how artists have harnessed the medium's essential role in community building and transforming material and conceptual approaches to making art across all media since 1970.

Few would dispute that Banksy is the most famous urban artist in the world today. That he is also a perceptive art historian might come as a surprise to many. Taken together, the myriad memorable works the street artist has created over the course of the past thirty years, constitute an audacious commentary on the history of image-making--a captivating critique waiting to be pieced together.

Armed with little more than stencils, spray paint, and an anonymizing cloak of after-hours darkness, Banksy has forged an alluring identity for himself as an incorrigible prankster who doesn't embrace tradition, but shreds it. Consider Banksy and you think of grubby city walls far removed from elite galleries and privileged museums where art is conventionally shown. What actually illuminates Banksy's audacious murals, impromptu urban sculptures, and vandalized paintings, however, is a profound understanding of the story of art.

Through the dark satirical lens of Banksy's mischievous reimagined masterpieces, art history is viewed anew and brought into unexpected focus. From his droll lampooning of the Lascaux cave paintings to reinventing Monet's enchanting water lily pond, a reboot of Géricault's tragic, gut-wrenching vision to Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring now instilled with street cred, everyone's genius is grist for his unmerciful mill. Far from being diminished in their significance, however, the works that Banksy ruthlessly parodies are ultimately refurbished by the ordeal. Banksy's iconoclastic works force us to rethink our affection for and appreciation of great works of art that define cultural history.

This stunning volume surveys the pioneering career of Cecily Brown (b. 1969), one of the most celebrated artists working in painting today. In particular, it explores her process through paintings and drawings that demonstrate both her radical contemporaneity and her keen reassessment of historical precedents such as old master paintings and abstract expressionism, which have been consistent hallmarks of her art. The book's probing essays look at her practice, investigate the main themes that recur in Brown's work, and consider her art from a feminist perspective. Brown reclaimed the heroic gestural expression often affiliated with the male artists of the abstract expressionist generation--largely out of favor with her peers--and in this mode she creates lush, dynamic paintings that often contain erotic content appropriated from art historical or pop culture sources. Moving between figuration and abstraction, Brown subverts gendered tropes in work that often deals with the power imbalances inherent in voyeurism and sexual violence.

Distributed for the Barnes Foundation

Exhibition Schedule:

Dallas Museum of Art
(September 29, 2024-February 9, 2025)

Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
(March 9-May 25, 2025)

Classic graffiti lettering and experimental typographical forms lie at the heart of street culture and have long inspired designers in many different fields. But graffiti
artists, who tend to paint the same letters of their tag again and again, rarely design complete alphabets.

Claudia Walde spent over two years collecting alphabets by 154 artists from thirty countries to show the many different styles and approaches to lettering within the graffiti and street art cultures. All of the artists have roots in graffiti. Some are world renowned such as 123 Klan (Canada), Faith47 (South Africa), and Hera (Germany); others are lesser known or only now starting to emerge.

Each artist received the same instructions: design all twenty- six letters of the Latin alphabet within the limits of a single page of the book. How they approached this task and selected the media with which to express their ideas was entirely up to them, and the results encompass not just street art but sketches, sculpture, digital art, and photography.

Sumptuously illustrated with reproductions of 50 paintings, this book celebrates the rich artistic legacy of American artist Mark Rothko and his signature works as a painter of abstract canvases. - Publishers Weekly

Mark Rothko's iconic paintings are some of the most profound works of twentieth-century Abstract Expressionism. This collection presents beautifully reproduced visuals of fifty large-scale artworks from the American master's color field period (1949-1970) to create a collectible art book to be treasured by Rothko fans and contemporary art enthusiasts.

Accompanying text by Christopher Rothko, the artist's son and chair of the Board of Directors of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, and Janet Bishop, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator of painting and sculpture, featuring illuminating details about Rothko's life, influences, and legacy.

Brimming with the emotional power and expressive color of his groundbreaking canvases, this essential volume brings the renowned artist's luminous work to light for both longtime Rothko fans and those discovering his work for the very first time. A textured case and dazzling cover art round out this lavish book that explores a defining moment in art history.

ABSTRACT ART BOOK: This rare and wonderful collection focused on Rothko's color field paintings provides an opportunity for art lovers to deeply explore some of the most important works of the Abstract Expressionism movement.

SUPERIOR QUALITY: Praised by readers as the best photographic reproductions of Rothko images ever seen in book form, this beautifully produced volume is one to study, display, and treasure.

GIFTABLE BOOK OF PAINTINGS: Handsomely packaged, this makes an impressive gift for any special occasion for art enthusiasts, including birthday, graduation, anniversary, or seasonal celebration.

Perfect for:

• Fans of Mark Rothko, modern art, and Abstract Expressionism
• Readers who enjoy books about painting, abstract art, Picasso, Kandinsky, Frankenthaler, and Basquiat
• Visitors who have experienced Rothko's work in museums, galleries, and the famous Rothko Chapel
• Collectors of fine art books

Ray Johnson (1927-1995), a.k.a. New York's most famous unknown artist, was notorious for the elaborate games he played with the institutions of the art world, soliciting their attention even as he rejected their invitations. In A Book about Ray, Ellen Levy offers a comprehensive study of the artist who turned the business of career-making into a tongue-in-cheek performance, tracing his artistic development from his arrival at Black Mountain College in 1945 to his death in 1995. Levy describes Johnson's practice as one that was constantly shifting--whether in tone, in its address to potential audiences, or among three primary artistic modes: collage, performance, and correspondence art.

A Book about Ray takes an elliptical path, circling around rather than trying to arrest in flight the elusive artist and his purposefully ephemeral art. By crafting the book in this way, Levy evokes Ray Johnson's art in the moment of its making and draws readers into the artist's world, while making them feel, from the beginning, that they somehow already know their way around that world. In exploring Johnson's scene, readers will also encounter the artists who influenced him, like Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp, and his friends and peers like Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. The work of such figures will look forever different in light of Johnson's subversive take on their shared aesthetic.

Suitable for readers both new to Ray Johnson and those already familiar with his work, A Book about Ray is a complete and vital portrait of an American original.

Longlisted for the National Book Award - A New York Times Notable Book of the Year - Winner of the New York City Book Award - Shortlisted for the Apollo Book of the Year Award - Shortlisted for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography - Finalist for the Gotham Book Prize - Finalist for the Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award at Interlochen

The never-before-told story of an obscure little street at the lower tip of Manhattan and the remarkable artists who got their start there.

For just over a decade, from 1956 to 1967, a collection of dilapidated former sail-making warehouses clustered at the lower tip of Manhattan became the quiet epicenter of the art world. Coenties Slip, a dead-end street near the water, was home to a circle of wildly talented and varied artists that included Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. As friends and inspirations to one another, they created a unique community for unbridled creative expression and experimentation, and the works they made at the Slip would go on to change the course of American art.

Now, for the first time, Prudence Peiffer pays homage to these artists and the unsung impact their work had on the direction of late twentieth-century art and film. This remarkable biography, as transformative as the artists it illuminates, questions the very concept of a group or movement, as it spotlights the Slip's eclectic mix of gender and sexual orientation, abstraction and Pop, experimental film, painting, and sculpture, assemblage and textile works. Brought together not by the tenets of composition or technique, nor by philosophy or politics, the artists cultivated a scene at the Slip defined by a singular spirit of community and place. They drew lasting inspiration from one another, but perhaps even more from where they called home, and the need to preserve the solitude its geography fostered. Despite Coenties Slip's obscurity, the entire history of Manhattan was inscribed into its cobblestones--one of the first streets and central markets of the new colony, built by enslaved people, with revolutionary meetings at the tavern just down Pearl Street; named by Herman Melville in Moby Dick and site of the boom and bust of the city's maritime industry; and, in the artists's own time, a development battleground for Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. The Slip's history is entwined with that of the artists and their art--eclectic and varied work that was made from the wreckage of the city's many former lives.

An ambitious and singular account of a time, a place, and a group of extraordinary people, The Slip investigates the importance of community, and makes an argument for how we are shaped by it, and how it in turns shapes our work.

A ground-breaking global survey of today's most innovative artists working with text

The inclusion of text in works of art was a revolutionary creative advancement of the twentieth century, with artists subverting traditional conceptions of 'art' and 'writing.' Younger generations of artists have continued to use the inherent readability of words to communicate ideas to viewers across a diverse array of mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation, and video.

Nominated by 66 leading global experts (including curators, critics, museum directors, and professors), Vitamin Txt showcases 103 living artists, from 34 countries, who place the use of text centrally within their artistic practices. With more the 500 artworks illustrated, and an introduction about the history of artists using text from ancient Chinese calligraphy to contemporary digital art, the book's focus allows for a showcase of a range of different mediums, providing a cross-disciplinary view into the art world today.

Advisors include: Negar Azimi, Naomi Beckwith, Meriem Berrada, Isolde Brielmaier, Yeon Shim Chung, Tandazani Dhlakama, Yilmaz Dziewior, Touria El Glaoui, Ruth Erickson, Alison Gingeras, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Jennifer Higgie, Mami Kataoka, Sunjung Kim, Venus Lau, Helen Molesworth, Kimberly Moulton, Fumio Nanjo, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Adriano Pedrosa, Nada Raza, Dieter Roelstraete, Andrew Russeth, Nancy Spector, Sarah Thornton, Marianna Vecellio, Gilbert Vicario, Victor Wang

Artists featured include: Ghada Amer, Hellen Ascoli, Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Sophie Calle, Alejandro Cesarco, Heman Chong, Tony Cokes, Tracey Emin, Jeffrey Gibson, Shilpa Gupta, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Ichihara Hiroko, Christine Sun Kim, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, Harland Miller, Shirin Neshat, Adam Pendleton, Shubigi Rao, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Kay Rosen, Ed Ruscha, David Shrigley, Studio for Propositional Cinema, Hank Willis Thomas, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Nora Turato, Kaylene Whiskey, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Xu Bing, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

An intimate history of America's first publicly funded artists' housing project and its residents that casts light on the precarious place of art-makers in a changing New York.

Westbeth Artists Housing was founded in 1970 to provide affordable housing for artists and their families. It occupies a full city block in what back then was one of New York's less desirable neighborhoods, the desolate far-West Village. Over the next fifty years, the building complex served as a Great Society for bohemians, home at any one time to more than three hundred and eighty creators, who included the pioneering video artist Nam June Paik, jazz great Gil Evans, and the photographer Diane Arbus, who took her life in her apartment in 1971, barely a year after she'd moved in.

To its tenants Westbeth offered the possibility of a middle-class life at affordable rents that freed them to walk along the cliff-edge of their art. Barton Lidicé Benes filled unlikely vessels (a water-gun, a squirting flower) with his HIV-positive blood in a series called Lethal Weapons. The actor Black-Eyed Susan played two dozen roles--including the empress of China and the queen of Saturn-- in the legendary Ridiculous Theatrical Company. After her basement studio was flooded during Superstorm Sandy, Karen Santry dove into the noxious water in rented scuba gear to check the condition of her paintings. With the passing of time, Westbeth's artists watched their neighborhood gentrify and rebrand as the glitzy Meatpacking District, where the average apartment rents for more than $6000 a month. And while some of those artists achieved fame, obscurity drove others to bitterness and despair. The Twilight of Bohemia frames its story with that of the life and tragic death of Gay Milius, a gifted and flamboyantly eccentric painter, flea-market picker, and novelist who moved into the building in 1970 and took his life there in 2006.

Sociologists describe Westbeth as a Naturally-Occurring Retirement Community, or NORC; today, a majority of its residents are over 60. But is Westbeth just an arty senior center holding out against the ruthless market forces of late-capitalist New York? Is artmaking a relic of a past way of life or a good that merits our society's continuing support? The Twilight of Bohemia explores the changing notions of what it means to be a successful artist and the heartbreaking difficulty of surviving as one at our present cultural moment. It's a book for anyone who loves brilliantly written stories of passion, idealism, ambition and community, for any reader interested in urban social history or the history of art, and for all who still believe in the old bohemian ethos: of living for art.

'Contemporary Art Underground invites us to see extraordinary beauty in the mundane.' - New York Times Book Review

A celebration of more than 100 major public art commissions throughout the New York transit system

Contemporary Art Underground presents more than 100 permanent projects completed between 2015 and 2023 by MTA Arts & Design. This ground-breaking program of site-specific projects by a broad spectrum of well-known and emerging contemporary artists has helped to create a sense of character and place at subway and commuter rail stations throughout the MTA system. Among the featured artists are Yayoi Kusama, Kiki Smith, Nick Cave, Ann Hamilton, Xenobia Bailey, Jim Hodges, Alex Katz, Sarah Sze, and Vik Muniz.

Of special interest is the discussion of fabricating and transposing the artist's rendering or model into mosaic, glass, or metal, the materials that can survive in the transit environment. This is the definitive survey of the latest works of the internationally acclaimed MTA Arts & Design collection. On view 24 hours a day, the collection is seen by more than four million subway riders and commuters daily and has been hailed as 'New York's Underground Art Museum.' The collection enlivens stations in all boroughs, with a myriad works by major contemporary artists executed in mosaic, glass, metal, and ceramic.

Profiles of fourteen women who transformed the country's foremost modern art museum in its fledgling years

Founded in 1929, the Museum of Modern Art owes much of its early success to a number of remarkable women who shaped the future of the institution in its first decades. As founders, patrons, curators and directors of various departments, these figures boldly defied societal norms to launch this radical venture during the depths of the Great Depression. They were fortunate in the freedoms afforded by uncharted territory; because the notion of a museum of modern art was new, there was a conspicuous absence of the professional prerequisites, official structures and respectable salaries that would have limited the jobs to men. This left the door open for a host of women to define their own roles and invent new fields. This book profiles 14 pioneering figures who made an indelible mark not only on MoMA, but on the culture of their time. Inventing the Modern transports the reader to the grit and glamour of midtown Manhattan in the 1930s and '40s. It deepens our understanding of MoMA's history and contributes to a broader understanding of women's achievement in the 20th century.
Subjects include: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, Mary Quinn Sullivan, Margaret Scolari Barr, Ernestine Fantl, Iris Barry, Elodie Courter, Sarah Newmeyer, Dorothy Miller, Dorothy Dudley, Nancy Newhall, Elizabeth Mock, Olga Guggenheim, Jean Volkmer.

Resisting interpretation or classification, Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was a prominent advocate for the artist's consummate freedom of expression. Although identified as a key protagonist of the Abstract Expressionist movement, first formed in New York City, Rothko rejected the label and insisted instead on a consummated experience between picture and onlooker.

Following a repertoire of figurative works, Rothko developed his now iconic canvases of bold color blocks in red, yellow, ochre, maroon, black, or green. With these shimmering, pulsating color masses, Rothko stressed that he had not removed the human figure but rather put symbols or shapes in its place. These intense color forms contained all the tragedy of the human condition. At the same time, Rothko explicitly empowered the viewer in the expressive potential of his work. He believed A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer.

From his early development through to his most famous color fields, this book introduces the intellect and influence of Rothko's dramatic, intimate, and revolutionary work.

Essential quotations from renowned artist and pop icon Keith Haring

Keith Haring remains one of the most important and celebrated artists of his generation and beyond. Through his signature bold graphic line drawings of figures and forms dancing and grooving, Haring's paintings, large-scale public murals, chalk drawings, and singular graffiti style defined an era and brought awareness to social issues ranging from gay rights and AIDS to drug abuse prevention and a woman's right to choose. Haring-isms is a collection of essential quotations from this creative thinker and legendary artist.

Gathered from Haring's journals and interviews, these lively quotes reveal his influences and thoughts on a variety of topics, including birth and death, possibility and uncertainty, and difference and conformity. They demonstrate Haring's deep engagement with subjects outside of the art world and his outspoken commitment to activism. Taken together, this selection reflects Haring's distinctive voice and reminds us why his work continues to resonate with fans around the globe.

Select quotations from the book:

• Art lives through the imaginations of the people who are seeing it. Without that contact, there is no art.
• It's a huge world. There are lots and lots and lots of people that I haven't reached yet that I'd like to reach.
• Art is one of the last areas that is totally within the realm of the human individual and can't be copied or done better by a machine.
• The artist, if he is a vessel, is also a performer.
• No matter how long you work, it's always going to end sometime. And there's always going to be things left undone.
• I decided to make a major break. New York was the only place to go.
• I came to believe there was no such thing as chance. If you accept that there are no coincidences, you use whatever comes along.
• There was a migration of artists from all over America to New York. It was completely wild. And we controlled it ourselves.
• I couldn't go back to the abstract drawings; it had to have some connection to the real world.

A landmark book documenting the first-ever art amusement park - launched in 1987 in Hamburg, Germany - in anticipation of its global reintroduction

In the late 1980s, more than 30 of the era's most acclaimed artists - including Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, Salvador Dalí, and Keith Haring - designed unique and fully operational fairground attractions specifically for the original park, including rides, interactive sculptures, games, performances, and music.

Each artist's contribution is documented in photographs that show the artist at work, with details of the artworks, and showing the art in the context of the exhibition. Giving access to rare artworks that have not been widely viewed in 35 years, this book is being published for the first time in English with an updated preface.

One of Japan's leading contemporary artists, Takashi Murakami (b. 1962) is known for a wide-ranging practice that encompasses not only fine art but fashion, consumer products, curation, and entertainment. Founder of the Superflat movement, Murakami makes art that is larger than life, boldly colored, and buoyant, with a Pop sensibility that draws inspiration from anime and manga.

But beyond the happy flowers and kawaii characters that have defined Murakami's career lurk darker manifestations: the sharp-toothed, multi-eyed monsters that have increasingly become the artist's vehicle for expressing the effects of rampant consumerism, human fallibility, and the perils of life in the digital fast lane. This book explores these themes in works from the last decade, presenting a disquieting vision of monsterized beings born in an era of unprecedented environmental, political, and social turmoil.

Conversations with Murakami and essays by Laura W. Allen, Hiroko Ikegami, and Masako Shiba deconstruct what monsters mean to the artist and reflect on new directions in Murakami's sculpture and the genesis of his recent NFT projects. The book features lavish color illustrations, a plastic jacket, dyed edges, and four gatefolds.

Published in association with the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

Exhibition Schedule:

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
(September 15, 2023-February 12, 2024)

As featured in Artsy, Hyperallergic, and Artnet

Explore the vibrant history and profound cultural resonance of feminist art from Korea and the diaspora

Renowned curator and scholar Dr. Kim Hong-hee's book is the first to delve into Korean feminist artists' impact on the East Asian cultural landscape.

This unprecedented visual survey celebrates the work of 42 contemporary artists, from rising stars to globally recognized names, including Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Kyungah Ham, Kimsooja, Lee Bul, Mire Lee, Minouk Lim, Haegue Yang, and Yun Suknam. Organized by themes including queer politics, ecofeminism, the diaspora, and abstraction, Korean Feminist Artists features artworks across painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, handicrafts, and performance. Through rich imagery and insightful writing, the book explores the quest of these pioneering artists for social, cultural, and sexual equality, from their confrontations with the mainstream art establishment to the significance of their aesthetic and political interventions.

Richly illustrated with nearly 260 beautifully reproduced images and closing with a personal and thought-provoking essay from influential South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon, this vital and timely survey reveals the impact of women artists on Korean culture at large.

Celebrate the LGBTQI+ community with this vivid collection of artworks that charts queer voices from around the world.

The twentieth century saw key shifts for the LGBTQI+ community across the western world: from the Stonewall uprising to the first pride parades and homosexuality law reforms. The years following these milestone moments have seen queer life face new challenges, celebrations, injustices and liberations.

As ever, this journey has been closely mapped by art and culture. Artists working across all mediums - from painting, performance, digital and beyond - have captured key moments, from the HIV/AIDS crisis and the rise of drag, to marriage equality and the fight for trans liberation. The artists include:

• Andrew Logan, sculptor and founder of the Alternative Miss World party
• Leading artists David Hockney, Nicole Eisenmann and Zanele Muholi
• Late greats Greer Lankton, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Tom of Finland
• Pioneers of Queer Cinema Derek Jarman and Sir Isaac Julien
• Ground-breaking photographers Nan Goldin, Ajamu X, Wolfgang Tilmans and Catherine Opie
• Contemporary art stars Sin Wai Kin, Zackary Drucker and Clifford Prince King

Boser cracks the cold case of the art world's greatest unsolved mystery.-- Vanity Fair

One museum, two thieves, and the Boston underworld: the riveting story of the 1990 Gardner Museum robbery, the largest unsolved art theft in history. Perfect for fans of the Netflix series This is a Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist!

Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and committed the largest art heist in history. They stole a dozen masterpieces, including one Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and five Degas. But after thousands of leads, hundreds of interviews, and a $5 million reward, not a single painting has been recovered. Worth as much as $500 million, the missing masterpieces have become the Holy Grail of the art world and their theft one of the nation's most extraordinary unsolved mysteries.

Art detective Harold Smith worked the theft for years, and after his death, reporter Ulrich Boser decided to pick up where he left off. Traveling deep into the art underworld, Boser explores Smith's unfinished leads and comes across a remarkable cast of characters, including a brilliant rock 'n' roll art thief and a golden-boy gangster who professes his innocence in rhyming verse. A tale of art and greed, of obsession and loss, The Gardner Heist is as compelling as the stolen masterpieces themselves.

Hailed as the first American-born art movement to have a worldwide influence, Abstract Expressionism denotes the non-representational use of paint as a means of personal expression. It emerged in America in the 1940s, with lead protagonists including Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.

Abstract Expressionism spawned many different stylistic tendencies but two particularly prominent sub-categories: action painting, exemplified by de Kooning and Pollock, and color field painting, made most famous by Rothko. Throughout, Abstract Expressionists strove to convey emotions and ideas through the making of marks, through forms, textures, shades, and the particular quality of brushstrokes. The movement favored large-scale canvases, and embraced the role of accident or chance.

With featured works from 20 key Abstract Expressionist artists, this book introduces the movement which shifted the center of art gravity from Paris to New York and remains for many the golden moment of American art.