Color as Field: American
Painting, 1950–1975
Karen Wilkin, with an essay by Carl Belz.

Thames & Hudson. Cloth, 176 pages, 133 color illustrations, 26 black-and-white illustrations, 2007. ISBN: 0500093382. $65.00.

Carl Belz’s essay is a lively memoir of his changing consciousness of “color-based painting” and his relationship with some of the painters, including those he exhibited when he was the director of the Rose Museum at Brandeis University. He clearly admires their work, and has many insights into their handling of paint. Like Wilkin, he is acutely aware of the change of sensibility brought about by the shift from oil to acrylic in the 1960s. Passionately devoted to color field painting, he tracks its development from what he calls “one-shot painting” (abstract expressionism), to “soak/stain painting,” identified with Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis. He is particularly taken with Frankenthaler’s paintings, all the more so because they “eluded the categories that were employed at the time (of her emergence in the early 1950s) to describe advanced American painting.” A pivotal figure, it’s hard to say whether she was “a second-generation Abstract Expressionist or a first-generation Color Field painter,” whether her drawing or color is more important, whether “she ‘belong[s]’ to the 1950s or 1960s.” The reproductions are as magnificent as the color field paintings, which will clearly hold their own in art history, even though the high moment of American abstraction they represent has passed its climax. Excerpted from a review by Donald Kuspit in the October/November 2008 issue.

Sean Scully: A Retrospective
Danilo Eccher, Lorand Hegyi, Maria Lluïsa Borràs, and Donald Kuspit.

Yale University Press. Cloth, 128 pages, 53 color illustrations, 16 black-and-white illustrations, 2007. ISBN: 0300120230. $45.00.

If you came to Sean Scully’s art at its flowering back in the early 1980s, you’ll welcome this richly illustrated volume documenting his paintings, photographs, and works on paper from 1969 to the present. You will equally appreciate the succinct, thoughtful, and accessible essays contributed by Danilo Eccher, Lorand Hegyi, Maria Lluïsa Borràs, and Donald Kuspit, each a knowledgeable and long-time supporter of Scully’s achievement.

Scully evolved in the 1970s as a tight, geometric abstractionist indebted to minimalism and, ultimately, Malevich and Mondrian, but his painting then became more gestural and expressive, comprising slab-like, rectangular blocks of somber color that recalled Rothko and the first generation of the New York school. Regarding this transition, Lorand Hegyi quotes the artist: “Minimalism was interesting to me as a kind of cleaning-out action, getting rid of fussy detail, and making art that was in some way essential, stripped down, direct and honest. What I wanted to do after Minimalism was to fill in the vacuum caused by this thinking… My response to Minimalism is to fill it in with the pathos of history and the possibility of emotional painting.”

For Donald Kuspit, Scully’s paintings exceed even the artist’s laudable ambition: “They breathe new spiritual life and subtlety into transcendental abstraction, showing that it not only remains possible and viable, but that it is also necessary in these spiritually dark art times.” Excerpted from a review by Carl Belz in the December/January 2008 issue.

The Houses of Greenwich Village
Kevin D. Murphy and Paul Rocheleau (photography).

Harry N. Abrams. Cloth, 224 pages, 200 color illustrations, 2008. ISBN: 0810995204. $45.00.

Kevin Murphy’s new book, The Houses of Greenwich Village, illustrates the development of Greenwich Village’s domestic architecture from the early nineteenth century to the present. With its patchwork of secluded courtyards, gardens, and narrow tree-lined streets, New York’s Greenwich Village is one of the very few neighborhoods that still retains the charm and timelessness of old New York. In this overview, Kevin Murphy explores the architecture and interiors of eighteen houses and two gardens located in Greenwich Village.

Beginning with the Robert Blum House (1827), The Houses of Greenwich Village traces the rich history behind each home and delves into the biographies of its original owners and architects, revealing the evolution of structure, design, and style in the neighborhood throughout the nineteenth century, as well as its vibrant character into the twentieth century. The stunning photographs by Paul Rocheleau were specially commissioned for this book and give readers unprecedented access to some of the most beautiful homes in New York.

Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de’ Medici Miles Unger.

Simon & Schuster. Cloth, 528 pages, 10 color illustrations, 21 black-and-white illustrations, 2008. ISBN: 0743254341. $32.00.

Magnifico is a vividly colorful portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the uncrowned ruler of Florence during its golden age. A true “Renaissance man,” Lorenzo dazzled contemporaries with his prodigious talents and magnetic personality. Known to history as Il Magnifico (The Magnificent), Lorenzo was the foremost patron of his day, and a renowned poet, equally adept at composing philosophical verses and obscene rhymes to be sung at Carnival. He befriended the greatest artists and writers of the time—Leonardo, Botticelli, Poliziano, and, especially, Michelangelo, whom he discovered as a young boy and invited to live at his palace—turning Florence into the cultural capital of Europe. He was the leading statesman of the age, but also a cunning and ruthless political operative. Miles Unger’s biography of this complex figure draws on primary research in Italian sources and on his intimate knowledge of Florence, where he lived for several years.

Florence was a city of contrasts, of unparalleled artistic brilliance and unimaginable squalor of both pagan excess and the fire-and-brimstone sermons of Savonarola, the Dominican preacher. Florence gave birth to both the otherworldly perfection of Botticelli’s Primavera and the gritty realism of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Nowhere was this world of contrasts more perfectly embodied than in the life of Lorenzo.

Wally’s World: The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Wally Wood, the World’s 2nd Best Comic Book Artist
Steve Starger and J. David Spurlock.

Vanguard Productions. Cloth, 224 pages, 200 illustrations, 2006. ISBN: 1887591818. $25.00.

Wally’s World opens with death by a .44 magnum gunshot, yet this is no mystery club thriller. It is the true, illustrated biography of legendary cartoonist and science-fiction illustrator Wallace Wood. Wood rose to the pinnacle of pop-culture stardom as one of the top artists at Mad magazine. Journalist Steve Starger and historian J. David Spurlock tell a concise but sweeping tale of Wood’s life and times and offer a brisk, colorful history of the comic book industry and the twentieth century in America, from the Depression through the early 1980s.

Wally’s World was a finalist for the Will Eisner Industry Award for Book of the Year in 2007. (Eisner was the creator of the comic strip The Spirit and was an avatar of the field.) The book also made the Locus Magazine and Hugo Award lists of best science-fiction-related books of 2007 and was cited in the latest edition of The Year’s Best Science-Fiction annual anthology, edited by Gardner Dozois. Available through the Vanguard Web site: www.creativemix.com

Vincent Andrew Hartgen: His Art and Legacy
Carl Little, David Hartgen, and Stephen Hartgen.

Wildflower Lane Publishing. Cloth, 258 pages, 48 color illustrations, 42 drawings, 16 pages of photographs, 2008. ISBN: 0977823210. $55.00.

Carl Little is the author of more than a dozen books on art, including books on Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and Edward Hopper. His extended essay in this book examines Hartgen as an important Maine painter, the artist’s legacy of building the University of Maine’s art collections, and his renown as a dynamic lecturer who introduced thousands of Maine students to the world of fine arts.

Little’s essay draws extensively on the Hartgen archive collection at the Fogler Library at the University of Maine, and from extensive newspaper and magazine articles on the artist from the 1950s through 2007. 

“Vincent Hartgen enjoys a place in the history of Maine art that is quite unlike any individual before or after him. A formidable artist—a master in watercolor and pen and ink—he also created a major university art collection and taught several generations of students the history and appreciation of art. His all-embracing commitment to art—his fervent belief that it should be a part of every individual’s life—led him down many rewarding paths. His unfaltering conviction as to the benefits engendered through the universal enjoyment and appreciation of all art touched countless lives.”

Senryu & Nudes
Marc Awodey, with an introductory essay by Janaka Stuckey.

Kasini House Books. Paper, 90 pages, 35 black-and-white illustrations, 2008. ISBN: 0977139778. $15.00.

Award-winning poet and renowned Vermont artist, Marc Awodey offers a collection of visual and written poetry. Senryu & Nudes juxtaposes drawings of nude figures with senryu, a Japanese-style of poetry. Like haiku, senryu is a short form of poetry that consists of three lines with seventeen or fewer phonetic units. Unlike haiku, where the subject is nature, senryu trades in the foibles of man, treating its subject with dark humor and cynicism.

“The point of combining senryu and nudes is to suggest that poems must evolve from a state of psychological nudity,” writes Awodey. The drawings in the book are poetic moments in and of themselves, rendered in a loose, gestural style. Some of the drawings have been torn apart, presented as ripped fragments of paper that form a collage on the page.

Opening Day
William Corbett.

Hanging Loose Press. Cloth, 132 pages, no illustrations, 2008. ISBN: 1931236879. $26.00.

William Corbett is a poet, among whose recently published books include Philip Guston’s Late Work: A Memoir. He declined to summarize his poetry, nor could I, and so instead shall offer a brief excerpt from the poem Backandforth, describing Chardin’s painting, Wild Strawberries:

…tiny, the devil to pick,
good to look at good
to eat good to paint
good to look at when painted—
moist pyramid close to
collapse into jeweled mush.
Their sweetness cut by a glass
of water and for company
a peach, some cherries
and for balance two long-stemmed
white carnations. Art like this
calms the world. It is where
paths cross, where past
and future, sleep and waking
flatten out into a renewable
present, wordless, though these
are words, always there when
the big cries wear themselves out.