Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York By Leah Dickerman. Text by Matthew Affron, Yve-Alain Bois, Masha Chlenova, Ester Coen, Christoph Cox, Hubert Damisch, Rachael DeLue, Hal Foster, Mark Franko, Matthew Gale, Peter Galison, Maria Gough, Jodi Hauptman, Gordon Hughes, David Joselit, Anton Kaes, David Lang, Susan Laxton, Philippe-Alain Michaud, Jaroslav Suchan, Lanka Tatersall, Michael R. Taylor.
In 1912, in several European cities, a handful of artists--Vasily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Francis Picabia and Robert Delaunay--presented the first abstract pictures to the public. Inventing Abstraction, published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, celebrates the centennial of this bold new type of artwork. It traces the development of abstraction as it moved through a network of modern artists, from Marsden Hartley and Marcel Duchamp to Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, sweeping across nations and across media. This richly illustrated publication covers a wide range of artistic production--including paintings, drawings, books, sculptures, film, photography, sound poetry, atonal music and non-narrative dance--to draw a cross-media portrait of these watershed years. An introductory essay by Leah Dickerman, Curator in the Museum’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, is followed by focused studies of key groups of works, events and critical issues in abstraction’s early history by renowned scholars from a variety of fields.
Featured image, a still from Marcel Duchamp's film Anemic Cinema (made under the name Rrose Sélavy), is reproduced from Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Choice
E. Baden
Three quarters of a century after Alfred Barr, founding director of New York's Museum of Modern Art, mounted the landmark 1936 exhibition Cubism and Abtract Art, MoMA curator Dickerman returns to the realm with a vast exhibition and comprehensive catalogue depicting the incipient stages of abtraction in the plastic arts. Situating the movement from a representation toward abstraction as a synchronic historical moment, as well as one of modernism's principal activities, this Eurocentric organizational feat elaborates a network based on cross talk, spontaneity, and simultaneous development. The front endpapers of the catalogue offer a graphic spread that plays off Barr's legendary chart - the cover to his exhibition's catalogue - acanonical lineage of begotten isms. Dickerman's updated diagram turns reader's view to a distributed web of networks and memes in an endeavor that highlights connectivity over paternity. Even with his intended catholic aopproach, painting and the two - dimensional flattened spatial constructs of pictorial space overwhelmingly predominate. Music is accorded a seminal role; sculpture and film are underrepresented; typographic space and artists' books are thankfully recognized. A terrific collection of diverse short essays by nearly 30 scholars complement this intelligently edited, well- illustrated, and indispensable resource.
Art in America
Daniel Marcus
Dickerman urges against defning abstraction in terms of forward progress... less interested in the invention of abstraction than abstraction as invention. The main impact of this horizontalist approach is geographic, bringing peripheral sites into focus without denying the importance of major hubs.
Art in America
Arne Glimcher
Featuring twenty-four contributors, this MoMA catalogue explores the evolution of early modernist abstraction across various mediums, countries and movements.
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In the December 20 New York Times, Roberta Smith writes, "In the second decade of the 20th century, abstraction became the holy grail of modern art. It was pursued with feverish intent by all kinds of creative types in Europe, Russia and elsewhere, responding to assorted spurs: Cubism and other deviations from old-fashioned realism, the beautiful whiteness of the blank page, communion with nature, spiritual aspirations, modern machines and everyday noise.
Painters, sculptors, poets, composers, photographers, filmmakers and choreographers alike ventured into this new territory, struggling to sever Western art’s age-old link with legible images, narrative logic, harmonic structure and rhyme. It was a thrilling, terrifying process, and in terms of the history of art, it is one of the greatest stories ever told. Inventing Abstraction: 1910-1925, a dizzying, magisterial cornucopia opening on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, captures something of that original thrill and terror, in a lineup of works that show artists embracing worldliness and, in some cases, withdrawing into mystical purity. The show brings new breadth and detail and a new sense of collectivity to a familiar tale that is, for the Modern, also hallowed ground." Featured image, Fernand Léger's "Contrast of Forms" (1913), is reproduced from Inventing Abstraction: 1910-1925. continue to blog
Anyone who has not made it to MoMA to see the landmark exhibition, Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern Art, has one last chance this weekend. Run, do not walk, to see this universally acclaimed show, curated by Leah Dickerman to span all media—including painting, drawing, print publication, sculpture, film, photography, sound poetry, atonal music and non-narrative dance—which The New York Times' Roberta Smith called "a marvel of a diagram, a creative circuitry variously visual, aural and kinetic, whose radiating lines yield new sights and insights at every juncture." Featured image, Marsden Hartley's "Painting, Number 5" (1914-15), is reproduced from MoMA's equally essential exhibition catalog. continue to blog
Anyone who has not made it to MoMA to see the landmark exhibition, Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern Art, has one last chance this weekend. Run, do not walk, to see this universally acclaimed show, curated by Leah Dickerman to span all media—including painting, drawing, print publication, sculpture, film, photography, sound poetry, atonal music and non-narrative dance—which The New York Times' Roberta Smith called "a marvel of a diagram, a creative circuitry variously visual, aural and kinetic, whose radiating lines yield new sights and insights at every juncture." Featured photograph, by Hugo Erfurth, is of Mary Wigman performing "Hexentanz I (Witch Dance 1)" in 1914. Reproduced from MoMA's equally essential exhibition catalog, it can also be seen alongside an extract from the 1930 film, "Mary Wigman Tanzt" on the Inventing Abstraction Website. continue to blog
FROM THE BOOK
In 1910 Kandinsky made the first modern abstract painting; in 1911, the Italian Futurists Bruno Corra and Arnaldo Ginna made the first abstract films; in 1913, inspired by the Futurists, Wyndham Lewis made his first Vorticist abstractions; in 1915, Malevich painted his "Black Square"; in 1916, Mondrian and Van Doesburg founded De Stijl; and in 1921, Man Ray made his first photograms.
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FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 12 in. / 376 pgs / 446 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $75.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $99 ISBN: 9780870708282 PUBLISHER: The Museum of Modern Art, New York AVAILABLE: 1/31/2013 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. By Leah Dickerman. Text by Matthew Affron, Yve-Alain Bois, Masha Chlenova, Ester Coen, Christoph Cox, Hubert Damisch, Rachael DeLue, Hal Foster, Mark Franko, Matthew Gale, Peter Galison, Maria Gough, Jodi Hauptman, Gordon Hughes, David Joselit, Anton Kaes, David Lang, Susan Laxton, Philippe-Alain Michaud, Jaroslav Suchan, Lanka Tatersall, Michael R. Taylor.
In 1912, in several European cities, a handful of artists--Vasily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Francis Picabia and Robert Delaunay--presented the first abstract pictures to the public. Inventing Abstraction, published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, celebrates the centennial of this bold new type of artwork. It traces the development of abstraction as it moved through a network of modern artists, from Marsden Hartley and Marcel Duchamp to Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, sweeping across nations and across media. This richly illustrated publication covers a wide range of artistic production--including paintings, drawings, books, sculptures, film, photography, sound poetry, atonal music and non-narrative dance--to draw a cross-media portrait of these watershed years. An introductory essay by Leah Dickerman, Curator in the Museum’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, is followed by focused studies of key groups of works, events and critical issues in abstraction’s early history by renowned scholars from a variety of fields.
