Interviews with American artists

Abstract

David Sylvester was one of the world's finest writers on modern art. From the decades after 1945, he proved himself to be a true and dedicated champion of new painting and sculpture. With his expertise, sympathy, and provocative style, Sylvester was unique in his ability to talk freely with influential artists. This seminal book includes 21 interviews -- recorded over the past forty years -- with leading American artists. Together they chronicle and illuminate all the great developments in American art of the twentieth century. Conversations from the 1960s vividly conjure up the New York art scene immediately after the war, when the newly arrived Europeans met the Americans, their different traditions colliding and fusing as they began to work together. Others, like those with Carl Andre, Cy Twombly, Alex Katz, and Jeff Koons, speak straight from today. No one but Sylvester could have produced this intricate collage, this chorus of voices that blend to create one of the most revealing and unusual histories of American art in the twentieth century.

Contents

Preface -- David Smith (1960) -- Louise Nevelson (1963) -- Adolph Gottlieb (1960) -- Barnett Newman (1965) -- Willem de Kooning (1960) -- Franz Kline (1960) -- Robert Motherwell (1960) -- Philip Guston (1960) -- Helen Frankenthaler (1961) -- John Cage (1966) -- Robert Rauschenbert (1964) -- Jasper Johns (1965) -- Cy Twombly (2000) -- Frank Stella -- Claes Oldenburg (1965) -- Roy Lichtenstein (1965) -- Alex Katz (1997) -- Robert Morris (1967) -- Carl Andre (2000) -- Richard Serra (1997-99) -- Jeff Koons (2000) -- Biographical Notes / Jonathan Shirland -- Acknowledgments.