Pousette-Dart

Abstract Expressionist Richard Pousette-Dart (1916–92) forged a unique artistic path through a lexicon of biomorphic and totemic forms. This volume provides a detailed look at his influential career, featuring extensive archival material alongside a selection of work since the 1950s spanning painting, drawing, sculpture and photography.

This groundbreaking volume on Richard Pousette-Dart is the most comprehensive publication on his painting to be published since the artist’s death. It provides fresh insights into his oeuvre by five outstanding, contemporary art historians, who have interpreted the artist’s creative output from the 1930s to 1992.

Richard Pousette-Dart, one of the founding members of the New York School, created paintings, drawings, sculptures, and journals for over sixty years. The youngest member of the first generation of American Abstract Expressionists, Pousette-Dart shared with his fellow artists’ interests in psychology, myth-making, anthropology, and both African and American tribal art. Along with Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, Motherwell, and others, Pousette-Dart created the art movement known as The New York School.

This book presents the evolution of Richard Pousette-Dart’s styles and philosophy and provides an in-depth look at his ever-evolving painting techniques. The essays focus on his major themes and periods, and include his contributions to the complexity of the intellectual and stylistic language of the Abstract Expressionist movement.

Sam Hunter is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and an acknowledged expert on 20th century art. His publications include Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and monographs on Isamu Noguchi and Robert Rauschenberg.Pepe Karmel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at New York University and is the author of Picasso and the Invention of Cubism (Yale University Press, 2003).Robert S. Mattison is a Professor of Art History and Head of the Art Department at Lafayette College. His most recent book is Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries.Martica Sawin is an art historian and critic. She is the author of Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School (MIT Press, 1995). John Yau is a widely published poet, fiction writer, and critic whose books include In The Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol (1993).