The term Neo-Dada surfaced in New York in the late 1950s and was used to characterize young artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns whose art appeared at odds with the serious emotional and painterly interests of the then-dominant movement, Abstract Expressionism. Neo-Dada quickly became the word of choice in the early 1960s to designate experimental art, including assemblage, performance, Pop art, and nascent forms of minimal and conceptual art.
An Audience of Artists turns this time line for the postwar New York art world on its head, presenting a new pedigree for these artistic movements. Drawing on an array of previously unpublished material, Catherine A. Craft reveals that Neo-Dada, far from being a reaction to Abstract Expressionism, actually originated at the heart of that movement’s concerns about viewers, originality, and artists’ debts to the past and one another. Furthermore, she argues, the original Dada movement was not incompatible with Abstract Expressionism. In fact, Dada provided a vital historical reference for artists and critics seeking to come to terms with the radical departure from tradition that Abstract Expressionism seemed to represent. Tracing the activities of artists such as Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Jackson Pollock alongside Marcel Duchamp’s renewed embrace of Dada in the late 1940s, Craft composes a subtle exploration of the challenges facing artists trying to work in the wake of a destructive world war and the paintings, objects, writings, and installations that resulted from their efforts. Providing the first examination of the roots of the Neo-Dada phenomenon, this groundbreaking study significantly reassesses the histories of these three movements and offers new ways of understanding the broader issues related to the development of modern art.
By:
Catherine Craft
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: 1
Dimensions:
Height: 29mm,
Width: 22mm,
Spine: 3mm
Weight: 1.588kg
ISBN: 9780226116808
ISBN 10: 0226116808
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 30 May 2012
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionI. Past Time1. Marcel Duchamp's Audience of Artists2. Expressions of Dadaism II. Robert Motherwell and The Dada Painters and Poets3. Layers 4. A Clearer Image III. The Dada Strain5. An Anti-Dada Attitude 6. Nothing Really New 7. Robert Motherwell: Discovery and Invention 8. Jackson Pollock: Deny, Ignore, Destroy 9. Barnett Newman: The Moment of Communion IV. The Neo-Dadaists10. Fellow Painters 11. Standards and Measures12. The Final End of Art V. Marcel Duchamp and the Dada Spirit13. Dada's Daddy 14. Wayward Conclusion: Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly at the Stable Gallery Notes Bibliography Index
Catherine Craft is an independent scholar, curator, and lecturer specializing in modern and contemporary art. She is adjunct assistant curator for research and exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, and the author of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.
Reviews for An Audience of Artists: Dada, Neo-Dada, and the Emergence of Abstract Expressionism
With characteristic elegance, Catherine Craft recasts abstract expressionism's development in terms of the avant-garde movements which preceded and followed it. An Audience of Artists adds considerable nuance to our understanding of the history of American art at midcentury and greatly refines our understanding of the claims and stakes implicit in the development of an American avant-garde and modern art in general. -Anne Goodyear, National Portrait Gallery
- Commended for PROSE (Art History/Criticism) 2012
