AMERICAN MASTERS

by Brian O'Doherty ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 1973

Here O'Doherty seeks to expand the possibilities of art criticism by departing from traditional formalist criticism, attempting rather to ""recognize and clarify a dialogue inseparable from modernism: that between an artist's work and the audience's use of it,"" that is, to isolate the artist's ""voice"" as it manifests itself in recurrent motifs, modes and tone of presentation, strategies, and in the creation of his persona or his self-image. The author acknowledges that through this approach ""one gains a device, but it must be used carefully for what it may yield."" Perceiving then a new and special relationship between the modernist and his audience (one which Harold Rosenberg has already explored copiously and brilliantly), O'Doherty probes the artist's myth -- ""a social armature that stabilizes a body of work and an image of the artist, making both comprehensible on the level of imaginative gestalts, rather than on visual terms."" His analyses of such artists as Hopper, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Rauschenberg, et al., are invigoratingly idiosyncratic and, without fully endorsing this critical stance, illuminating, and frequently strewn with challenging insights and aphorisms; for example, in juxtaposing the two Andy's, Warhol and Wyeth, he writes: ""Both arouse a violent prejudice aborting them out of art history into social history and legend. Both, totally obtuse, share mirror-image varieties of innocence: Wyeth is a sophisticated primitive; Warhol, like Jarry, a primitive sophisticate.

Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION