The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell (Documents of Twentieth-Century Art) - Softcover

"More than any other artist since Vasari, I think, Robert Motherwell undertook to situate the art movement in which he participated in the larger structures of history. He played a triple role, as thinker, as maker and as intermediary, in the transformation of modernism that took place in New York in the 1940s and '50s."--Arthur Danto, "The New Republic

This book brings together a representative selection of Robert Motherwell's writings about art, public lectures, essays, interviews, and letters. Motherwell's writing was invaluable in articulating the intent of the New York School of American artists--Pollock, de Kooning, Gottlieb, Kline, Baziotes, Still, Gorky--during a period when their work was often reviled for its departure from traditional representation. Motherwell was not only the primary theorist of abstract expressionism but also one of its major exponents. As founder of the Documents of Modern Art series (later renamed The Documents of Twentieth-Century Art), he gathered the writings of modern artists to give them a voice at a time when very few people understood their theories or work.