Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Truly excellent
Nelson's examination of the women of the NY School is not a distaff analysis, but a critical dilation of an otherwise false whole -- it is a book to be written on, and in, with the great joy that comes from great discovery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Almost Perfect - very important
Seems to be the first book that truly begins to cover the New York Crowd with any thoroughness...would truly like to have seen representative works by all the painters covered (perhaps in a series of addenda???) Otherwise an invaluable book for reference of that most fruitful ten years in American (and perhaps world) art history.

Best and Most Complete Study of The NY School to Date!
New York School Abstract Expressionists: Artists Choice by Artists is an important contribution to the study of Abstract Expressionism.265 artists are documented and 86 are featured.If you are like me, a bit tired of the usually featured artists of the New York School(Pollock, Rothko, Tobey, etc.) then you will be pleasantly suprised by the "Other Talented Artists" that comprised the New York School.

The starting point is the historic 9th Street Show of 1951. This is thoroughly discussed as are the subsequent New York School Artist's Annuals of 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, and 1957.Numerous charts, posters and photographs are included, showing which artists were in which shows.Scholars have pretty much neglected these significant shows which featured the best of the "New Art".

As I stated earlier, 86 artists are featured.Each of these artists have 2 works shown (full page) and an artist's statement. The reproductions are excellent.There is also a Bio, and a listing of solo exhibitions and group exhibitions for each of these artists. An amazing amount of research and love went into this new production.You can discern that there were many "greats" in the NY School.You can see that the NY School was actually a bonafide community of artists. I will list the artists with an "A" and B" last name, just to give you an idea of the breadth of this work: Aach, Abbott, Abrams, Adams, Agostini, Albers, Albert, Albizu, Alcopley, Anderson, Andrews, Arnold, Asawa, Asher, Avery, Barber, Baziotes, Beauchamp, Beck, Ben, Benton, Biala, Blaine, Bolotowsky, Booth, Bouche, Bourgeois, Brach, Brenson, Briggs, Brooks, Brustlein, Bultman, Busa, and Button.

This 393 page book was sumptuosly printed and has a 12" x 9 1/2" format. It has a black cloth binding and a handsome dust jacket with ALL the names of the NY School artists.This silver dust jacket has black and red lettering which pops-out and is a stunning tribute to the artists.

I can only hope that there will be more books on these "Other Artists of the New York School of Painters and Sculptors". ... Read more

Book Description
Musicians and artists have always shared mutual interests and exchanged theories of art and creativity.This exchange climaxed just after World War II, when a group of New York-based musicians, including John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and David Tudor, formed friendships with a group of painters.The latter group, now known collectively as either the New York School or the Abstract Expressionists, included Jackson Pollock, Willem deKooning, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Franz Kline, Phillip Guston, and William Baziotes. The group also included a younger generation of artists-particularly Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns-that stood somewhat apart from the Abstract Expressionists. This group of painters created what is arguably the first significant American movement in the visual arts. Inspired by the artists, the New York School composers accomplished a similar feat. By the beginning of the 1960s, the New York Schools of art and music had assumed a position of leadership in the world of art. For anyone interested in the development of 20th century art, music, and culture, The New York Schools of Music and Art will make for illuminating reading. ... Read more

Book Description
With the emergence of Abstract Expressionism after World War II, the attention of the international art world turned from Paris to New York. Dore Ashton captures the vitality of the cultural milieu in which the New York School artists worked and argued and critiqued each other's work from the 1930s to the 1950s. Working from unsifted archives, from contemporary newspapers and books, and from extensive conversations with the men and women who participated in the rise of the New York School, Ashton provides a rich cultural and intellectual history of this period. In examining the complex sources of this important movement--from the WPA program of the 1930s and the influx of European ideas to the recognition in the 1950s of American painting on an international scale--she conveys the concerns of an extraordinary group of artists including Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Philip Guston, Barnett Newman, Arshile Gorky, and many others. Rare documentary photographs illustrate Ashton's classic appraisal of the New York School scene. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A fine history
Dore Ashton doesn't disappoint with this interesting history of the New York school of art.Ashton has been there, done that, and writes with a clear, readable style.

This book is a must for every artist, art student, and anyone interested in art and the art world. Buy the paperback and enjoy. ... Read more

Book Description
Four American women: Marcia Siegel, Deborah Jowitt, Arlene Croce and Nancy Goldner are writers who became dance critics partly by design.By showing us extensive examples from their vivid writing about dance, Diana Theodores presents a detailed and illuminating analysis of their styles and ideas from 1965 to 1985, the Golden Age of Dance in New York.For the first time, she presents these four writers as a school of dance criticism, four women who defined American dance in a key era of its recent history.
About the Author ... Read more

Amazon.com
In this hefty single-volume reference, one of the world's mosttrusted public libraries dispenses business information on subjectsranging from sexual harassment in the workplace to methods oforganizing files. Ever wonder if your sales letters are in the correctformat, or where to find the small-business loan you need to expandoperations? The New York Public Library Business Desk Referenceanswers these and thousands of other questions in its far-rangingpages. Subjects covered include business writing and speaking,personnel administration, emerging technologies, accounting andbudgeting, office design, record keeping, marketing research, and muchmore. Extensive cross-referencing and a thorough index help keep trackof interrelated topics, and directories of consultants, recruiters, andgovernment resources give you the contact information you need to learnmore. If you're in business, this indispensable reference belongs onyour shelves next to the dictionary and thesaurus.Book Description
In the tradition of the highly regarded New York Public Library Desk Reference, this all-encompassing, up-to-date volume tells you everything you need to know about running a successful business. Clear, concise and easy-to-use, it covers business travel, office etiquette, the legalities of contracts, choosing the best financial software and more. Communication is extensively discussed with examples of effective correspondence, e-mails, reports and memos. Filled with fact-packed tables, lists, and charts, glossary of business terms and comprehensive index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Outdated !
Being an Accountant/Controller for smaller corporations (75-200 employees) ... I can state that this book would be Out-of-Date as of 05 March 2003 .... since it was published in 1999!!(and who knows when it was actually 'written'??).
Personnel issues & laws are changing too rapidly (so is the business world in general) to buy a book on business that is FOUR YRS. old !

An Essential Reference in our small office.
I own a small geoscience company in the petroleum sector; Rocks make senseto us, not files, office procedures or office equipment. There are three ofus in the company but nobody wanted to do the filing, bill-paying orbook-keeping because none of us had experience with these things.Initially, we created our own system(s)of getting things done by giving it2 or 3 seconds of thought. It worked fine until something changed, which italways does in this world.To straighten things up, I bought this book.It looked as useful as the much larger Desk Reference, which is aconvenient source of information that would take hours or days to locateany other way.The Business Desk Reference has kept us out of troublewith its brevity and accuracy. We discovered that our office was a plainvanilla setup and all we needed were a few 'tried & true' procedures tokeep us out areas where we don't know what we're doing and, instead, makingmoney, which we do know how to do.

A must have reference!
I have been using this book in the reference section of the library.I am sure that all of my family members will want a copy for work after they browse through my purchase. After thirty years in education, I have foundit to be my best source for career change information.The businessetiquette, and employment law information has been most helpful. It is arefernce book that one can read for pleasure.It is hard to put down. ... Read more

Book Description
Statutes of Liberty was the first book on The New York School of Poets, and gave an acclaimed account of its key figures: John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler. This second edition contains up-to-date material on the group and its growing influence on postmodern poetics. A new postscript focuses on the work of Ashbery, currently the most esteemed American poet since Wallace Stevens, and his prolific output in the 1990s, including his 200-page epic poem Flow Chart. ... Read more

Book Description
In the shadows of the city waits an invisible frontier—a wilderness thriving in the deep places, woven through dead storm drains and live subway tunnels, coursing over third rails. This frontier waits in the walls of abandoned tenements, hides on the rooftops, infiltrates the bridges’ steel. It’s a no-man’s-land, fenced off with razor wire, marked by warning signs, persisting in shadow, hidden everywhere as a parallel dimension. Crowds hurry through the bright streets, insulated by pavement, never reflecting that beneath their feet or above their heads lurks a universe.

Led by its two founding agents, L. B. Deyo and David “Lefty” Leibowitz, Jinx is a stylish urban adventure out?t known for its daring—if sometimes ridiculous—forays into the hidden wonders that lurk above and beneath America’s greatest city, New York. In Invisible Frontier L. B. and Lefty chronicle Jinx’s dramatic—if sometimes absurd—exploration of a Dante-esque New York, from the depths of the city’s underground Hell (abandoned aqueducts and subway tunnels) to the pinnacles of its Paradise (rooftops and bridges) and everything in between, capturing the genius of the city’s engineering, the vibrancy of its found art, and the elegiac beauty of its ruins. Here is a true series of wittily narrated adventures into the hidden world beneath a great civilization. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

THIS BOOK ABSOLUTELY SUCKS i wish i had more hands so i can give this book 4 thumbs down
Invisible Frontier: Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York

this book was a tremendous dissapointment.. it couldnt even hold my attention while i try to skim through it on the john.. lol.. but seriously, its has absolutely no interesting information about the hidden aspects of NYC. it just describes how this "team" walks around breaking into stuff in the city (and lists every individual person involved in each activity at least once a paragraph, so lame) let me give you an example."johnny b was the first one walking in the pack on the island, then comes randy jo behind wearing all black.. right behind him is betty sue"... AND THIS IS EVERY CHAPTER AND ALMOST EVERY PARAGRAPH..it gives no background infomation on the places the visited, there is no secret information in it, it decribes the george washington bridge, grand central and some other lame sites that anyone who can search google could get 100000x more info then what this book provides.What a great idea for a book but it was so poorly executed that it made me mad enough to log onto amazon just to write a bad review.. dont waste your money

Horrible, horrible book.
As someone very interested in urban exploration (especially in the subways) I wanted to check this book out upon hearing of it. After reading many of these Amazon reviews though, I opted out of a purchase, and took it out of my Bronx library instead. Thank goodness as I only wasted valuable time, and not any money.

This book is a sham. It is obviously mostly fiction. And it's boring fiction at that. The book is divided into chapters, each chapter a new "adventure."

I read the subway one first, where the "explorers" take the 6 train around the loop at the end of the line, to see the City Hall Station, which opened in 1904 (NYC's first station) and closed in 1948. The station is located on the loop of the 6 train, that makes the southbound trains go back up north after the last stop, Brooklyn Bridge. First of all, anyone can go on this "adventure." Just stay on the train at the last stop, Brooklyn Bridge, and that's it. You go south, circle around the loop through the City Hall station, and head uptown. Despite the author's attempt to make this sound risky, no conductors walk through the train to see if anyone is on (like they really care), just sit down. As a matter of fact, the train conductor actually says the next stop is Brooklyn Bridge, uptown! The author created some "European tourists" that inadvertantly stayed on the 6 after the last stop, and the author even tries to create some mystery by saying "are we on the wrong train?" Well, unless all those huge "6" signs that are lit all over the train are difficult to read, then you probably got on the correct train. The author also fails to mention that the MTA used to give public tours all the time through this station (and others like the 18th street on the 6 and more) but stopped after 9-11. This chapter was a joke. (UPDATE: The MTA now gives tours through the original City Hall station again.)

I started reading the other chapters, and saw they were no better. I then started to breeze through the book. One thing that is very obvious - no photographs of the adventures are in the book at all. This, despite the fact that on page 67 the author states, "Josh takes out his camera and snaps away at every pipe and puddle..."But no photos of their "adventures" are in the book. Why? Because it's fiction.

There are photos of what they are supposed to be exploring, sure, that's easy. There's even one pic of one of these clowns hopping some fence somewhere, ooo. Buit no pics of the actual "adventures." I guess "Josh" lost all those pictures when he went to CVS to have them developed.

The funny thing is, you can save yourself a lot of time by just going online and viewing pictures of these things for yourself. Especially the City Hall station, there are tons of pictures of it available from the people that were in there during the tours.

Just stay away from this sham of a book, it's really a huge waste of time.

disappointing
If the writing and adventures could match the inflated perceptions that the authors have of themselves, this would be a great read. Unfortunately, the writing is downright pedestrian and the urban adventures are either lackluster and/or poorly described. Also, the flow of each chapter is interruptedwith uninteresting asides and juvenile commentaries on a scattershot laundry list of topics.

A typical example of this is the uninspiring breakin of an abandoned Harlem row house. The author starts off with a truncated textbook-like history of Harlem that lasts a few paragraphs. Once that boring bit of exposition is done with the writer and his friends drive around a little bit and then enter an abandoned building. They look around a little bit (not exactly thrilling) and then attempt to leave via the fire escape. Here, we are presented with a another aside about the author's 'love' of fire escapes.. "What, in fire escapes, do I admire?... their constancy... firm as Gibraltar... like Ulysses to his barque.. supporting, as Atlas, the gravid snows of winter". Ugh, at times like this you wish the author would have consulted with an editor.

Not everything is terrible. Things pick up here and there, there are a few interesting tid-bits of history, but overall the book does not live up to it's potential.

Well, there's four hours of my life I'll never get back.
This book was a tremendous disappointment.Many of the "missions" are laughably boring and/or carried out in a stunningly inept fashion, much of the writing is markedly narcissistic in its tone and yet inconsistent in content, and perhaps most disappointing the descriptions of the places where the authors go are remarkably poor.

First, the missions.The mission to the UN mostly involves trying to get inside by asking for an interview.Wow, it's like working for my high school newspaper all over again.Once they're shot down, one member of the team briefly sprints past a barrier and `explores' a plaza outside the building for less than a minute (the main point of which is to hold up the Jinx flag while his friends take his picture).Another involves staying on the subway even after the conductor announces passengers should get off! - oh the bravery and cunning!.This is made all the more ridiculous when two non-English speaking tourists inadvertently do the same thing and when the authors do not even get off the train once it's stopped at the abandoned subway station they had planned to explore.Later, they go into an abandoned house, where they discover that a lot of other people have also done this over the years.

Second, the writing.Much of the text focuses on how cool they look in their "uniforms" (dark suits and sunglasses), how cool they look walking to their missions, how cool they look on their missions, how cool it is when they all get together and how everybody else in New York are mindless zombies who don't appreciate what is around them because they are trapped in their sad, meaningless lives.The whole uniform thing is particularly stupid.There's one throw-away sentence explaining that they wear these uniforms because otherwise "scientists" and "philosophers" will not take their "empirical data" seriously, but you simply can't shake the feeling that they just want to look like they're either in "Reservoir Dogs" or "The Matrix" (particularly when the ridiculous `uniforms' keep attracting attention when they're trying to sneak into some place.)Throughout the book the authors bounce between stressing that they explore places for the scientific, empirical value of doing so and that it is not at all for a sense of adventure, only then to talk later about how much fun the adventure of it all is (including one author's admission that he believes the other has a death wish and that is why he engages in so many dangerous activities while exploring).In addition, much space is taken up with various diatribes on the evils of modern life (including a particularly passionate rant against the United Nations that comes totally out of nowhere), and all the horrible twenty-somethings of the world who spend their lives drinking iced coffees (which is a particularly hollow complaint when - a few pages later - the Jinx crew sits down to iced coffees after having screwed up the UN mission).You almost get the sense that after trying in vain to improve the writing, the publishers finally decided to spin the writing as "witty" and hope that people fell for it.

Finally, the descriptions are no better than what you'd get if you wrote down what you think the locations look like without ever actually going.The Croton Aqueduct is dark and slippery.An abandoned subway station is eerie.When you're on top of the George Washington Bridge, the Hudson River looks a long way away.And that's about as good as the descriptions get.

Don't waste your time or your money.

Urban Exploration Farce
I was so excited to receive this book, and can not believe how dissapointing it is!!The people aren't urban explorers (UErs for short) - they are children who dress up in costumes and give each other "gang" names and then proceed to perform daredevil-like stunts which are not very impressive.
The book starts out talking about two of the teams failures - City Hall Place and the Croton Acqueduct, which makes you want to put it down and watch grass grow instead.I've been past City Hall Station many times on the downtown 6 train, even with my Mother, it barely even qualifies as daredevil.Their train stops while looping through the station and they are standing right there, but decide not to jump off - don't write a book about it then!!Croton acqueduct is equally as sad - they walk through the tunnels for hours, then stop before the actual bridge (the goal) because they are tired - go back the next day and do it right, or don't write a book about it!!
Any yes, there are no pictures, although they refer to their pictures all the time.
The writing is pretentious and annoying and pointless for the most part - I want to read about "Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York" not about your evening spent in twin donuts looking like freaks and scaring people!!
Do yourself a favor and don't buy this book - there are better books about urban exploration, particularly ones about the NYC area.
... Read more

Book Description
Critical essays on five New York School poets of the 1950s. ... Read more

Book Description
At 22, Dan Brown came to the Bronx's P.S. 85 as an eager,fresh-faced teacher. Unbeknownst to him, his assigned class, 4-217, was thedesignated "dumping ground" for all fourth-grade problem cases, and hisstudents would prove to be more challenging than he could ever anticipate.Intent on being a caring, dedicated teacher but confronted with unrulychildren, absent parents, and a failing administration, Dan was pushed tothe limit time and again: he found himself screaming with rage, punchinghis fist through a blackboard out of sheer frustration, often just wantingto give up and walk away. Yet in this seeming chaos, he slowly learnedfrom his own mistakes and discovered an unexpected well of inspiration todiscipline and teach and make a difference.The Great ExpectationsSchool is the touching journey of Class 4-217 and their teacher, Mr.Brown, but more than that, it is the revealing story of a brokeneducational system and all those struggling within and fighting against it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

BEWARE!!!!!!!
Beware this is not Dan Brown the auther of "The Da Vinci Code". Different people!!!!!!!!!

Even the worst situation is not without hope
Dan Brown surpasses the similarly named charlatan by the second page of this tender recollection, so enough conversation about how one is not the other, eh? Anyone comparing the two (myself included) is drawing a tenuous, superficial connection.Simply put, it would be a discredit to this Mr. Brown to be associated with that one.

The Great Expectations School is a story from the intersection of reality and idealism.Mr. Brown acts as interlocutor between an impoverished section of society and those too caught up in disbelief or willful refusal to recognize it.Harsh conditions are much easier to stomach when they are limited to 30 seconds on the news.

Mr. Brown is brave to harrow the experience that he reports, but themore courageous act by far is to then report on it, in all of its bleak grandeur. This reader is very thankful that he did.

Telling it like it is
As a second year New York City Teaching Fellow, I can attest that the stories Dan tells in this book are still stories that we as teachers face every day.From the students living in shelters and floating from address to address to the micro-management of such things as bulletin boards, it's all very much the world in which I live.The book is heartbreaking in its realism ~ but it gives me hope to know that I am not alone.

I definitely second the motion that this become required reading for anyone entering aternative certification programs.It's less Pollyanna-ish than "Ms. Moffett's First Year" which, while somewhat realistic, doesn't really get to the heart of the matter, and more realistic than "Educating Esme", which, unless you ARE Esme, really isn't realistic at all.While I wouldn't change my path into teaching, I wish I'd had someone really tell it like it is before I started as Dan has done here.

Richard Dadier Or Just Another Krazy Kozol In The Making?
While it is laudable that Dan Brown chose a particularly challenging forum for his debut teaching job, he appears much too susceptible to the influences of his tag team book tour partner, Jonathan Kozol.

The character Richard Dadier, as played by Glenn Ford, in the 1955 film "The Blackboard Jungle," was no proponent of the Kozol educational ideology. While Dadier believed in discipline and order in the classroom, Kozol prefers recalcitrance and anarchy. Kozol is of the impression that education must not be politically neutral. Guess which political ideology he prefers? Considering he wrote "On Being A Teacher," after his return from Cuba, the answer is self evident.

Let's hope that Mr. Brown stays true to his own ideals and does not embrace the radicalism of Kozol, at least not while he has a captive audience in a public school classroom. It is one thing to act the martyr in a low-paying, essentially thankless job as an inner city teacher, expecting the students to follow you to the stake is counter productive. To paraphrase Kozol, there is nothing worse then soporific socialism to "deaden children's souls."

More than expected
Dan Brown has written a book that can tear at your heart and yet still show humor. Having been a teacher myself, it is marvelous to read a book that really shows the inner workings of public education in today's society. There is a great sense of warmth, caring, honesty and wit. This should be a must read for every prospective teacher and anyone else involved with education. This book says it all. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

great book for grades 3-5
Easy to read, interesting for children 8-10.Better than most textbooks.Would recommend it to any parents who want to help their kids prepare for the NYS 5th grade social studies exams. ... Read more

Product Description
The essays in this book focus attention on the vibrant New York poetry scene of the 1960s and '70s, on the poets who came after what is now known as the New York School. Amiri Baraka, Bernadette Mayer, Hannah Weiner, Clark Coolidge, Anne Waldman, and Ron Padgett are just some of the poets who extended the line that John Ashberry, Frank O Hara, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler started. In Don't Ever Get Famous, a range of writers and scholars examine the cultural, sociological, and historical contexts of this wildly diverse group of writers. These poets, many of whom are still writing today, changed American poetry forever, and this provides the first large-scale consideration of their work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Face Cards Turned on their Heads
In the wake of his book whose argument (that St. Marks Church in the 1960s and 1970s became the epicenter of everything exciting about poetry) was met with stupefied confusion in some quarters, anger in others, delighted agreement in many, critic and poet Daniel Kane has returned with another book as stimulating and controversial as the first.This time he's playing editor to a wide field of critics, essayists, fellow poets, professors and mavericks writing on--well, it's a little vage at first, but that's part of the issue itself, that the very miscellany of the later "New York School" poets fuzzed up their individuality and made us think of all of them in a blur.If I. A. Richards were running his course in "Practical Criticism" today, I ask myself, printing poems without bylines, would I be able to tell a Charles North from a Tom Clark?Why do I torture myself pondering such questions?It's because DON'T EVER GET FAMOUS makes them obligatory.It's a fascinating compendium of critical work that will change your mind about poetry and the ways in which we manipulate it into a canon, a history, a narrative.

Wish I had the space to speak about all of them, but I'll have to confine myself to a few examples of the different *sorts* of argument you'll encounter here.Patrick Masterson and Paul Stephens take up the thorny case of Joseph Ceravolo, arguing against Kane's own inclusion of Ceravolo as a typical 2nd generation NY School poet.He is not ironic, nor urban, nor does he drop the names of his contemporaries, nor does he employ Beat writing practices.Masterson and Stephens have a little bit of a tendency to over-activate their critical analysis, someone must have told them once to make every word snap, so they elude me in some of their descriptions"In a way, everything that takes place in [Ceravolo's Fits of Dawn]" takes place `too fast,' in some remote time `ago.'"That's true, but `in a way' every other thing in the world does too, it all depends on how precise you want to get, and how far away you can afford to step away from the thing you're observing.And what happened to my nose for smut?For the life of me I can't find the off-color in what the authors call Ceravolo's "slightly off-color statement, "how great it is to be forgotten and then come back to life again, even though you are dead."Or is this off-color `in a way'?Otherwise the authors make some wise observations and clear some genuinely new ground.

Andrew Epstein again makes the case that something must have "gone on" between LeRoi Jones and Frank O'Hara around the time Personism got invented, otherwise why would (the man now known as) Amiri Baraka have gotten so panicky around the question of homosexual love?In his book BEAUTIFUL ENEMIES Epstein had already probed the awful daring of a moment's surrender, but here, in the context of Kane's anthology, his argument becomes all the more pointed.Is there an actual "droit du seigneur" like in A TALE OF TWO CITIES between members of different poetic generations?Maybe his subtitle should have been "The New York School After the Second Generation," with the word "After" embellished in letters singed with erotic flame.

Jed Rasula has a comprehensive look at the poetics and politics of "deep image," a short-lived movement of the late 1950s pioneered by Jerome Rothenberg and Robert Kelly who, to their chagrin, saw Robert Bly and James Wright run away with their chevrons and change them into something totally different than the relatively stable and useful sense they had found there.Rasula can't write an unpleasing sentence, and he demonstrates that, however "sloganistic" deep image became in Bly's hands, it's still an interesting prism through which to view, for example, Robin Blaser's "Image Nation" poems or Spicer's AFTER LORCA, though this is wandering rather far afield from the "after New York School" narrative.However it shows that editor Kane is pretty much not afraid to throw the dice and play them as they lay.If the heterogeneity of this generation of poets has obscured their work, Kane tries to clear the playing field by declaring this heterogeneity a plus, a radical practice of democracy in which no method is reified at the expense of any other.

Of course, he would like it both ways, to celebrate the very existence of a "poetics of sociability" in which individual talent isn't privileged as it had been in previous modernist generations--AND he would also argue that many of the party participants were geniuses of the first water.By the end of the book I'm like, totally in agreement with him on both counts.

I still don't know if I'd be able to tell a Charles North poem if it came and bit me in the Astor Bar, but I'm getting to a place where I know it's a good test of poetry.I enjoyed nearly everything about the book; oh, but for one thing, unfortunately Dalkey Archive which otherwise did a fine job with the volume, doesn't ssem to have employed a fact checker--I guess even scholarly presses don't often do so nowadays?Otherwise editor Kane should have asked a friend to read through the manuscript from beginning to end and note where things are just plain wrong.The old red pencil mark?I wonder where on earth Andrea Brady, in an otherwise synpathetic and illuminating study of the Boston poet John Wieners, ever got the idea that he was a member of Jack Spicer's "Poetry as Magic" workshop in San Francisco?(And why no editor corrected this error.)Well, I guess I see why, it certainly seems plausible, and it would explain a lot, and it was like Wieners to join in on things, often from a perpendicular and slightly goofy angle, and so he might have applied for the Magic Workshop if he had been living in San Francisco at the time, but he wasn't, so he didn't, but now everyone will take it as a fact that he did.Even I started doubting myself, thanks to the combined scholarly heft of Andrea Brady, Daniel Kane, and Dalkey Archive.

And I don't like that!

But all in all you have to get this book and don't let anybody's nitpicking critiques deter you.As Baraka said, "YOU LOVE THESE DEMONS AND WILL NOT LEAVE THEM." ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. ... Read more

Book Description
This catalogue focuses on the process of artistic transformation which took place when a group of European Surrealists were forced in exile during World War II and sought refuge in New York. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good book
I used this with my children when I homeschooled.It was a good book.I wish there were more in the series.

Karen

It was a great book!
Well it was a fine book it made a little sence tothe story.Well it was about a teacher when sheasked the class to see what states they where expert on.Well a girl she tells about her aunt live in Branks,NY and thatsthe story Bye. Reader,Nicholas ... Read more

Book Description
The French/European story of Surrealism has been written; the story of abstract expressionism has been told. But the connection between them, how one acted as a catalyst for the other, has been a long-missing chapter in the history of art. Martica Sawin finally provides it.

In this fascinating account of what was happening within Surrealism during the crucial years 1938-1947, Martica Sawin documents the cultural transfer that took place when the greater part of the prewar Surrealist group was transplanted to the Western Hemisphere. Eminently readable, clearly told, and biographically rich, Sawin's year-by-year narrative pieces together when and how the refugees arrived and their various points of contact with the future abstract expressionists. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

How America Stole Europe's Artistic Thunder
So much art history and criticism is just a pose of knowledge instead of its communication. This book, thankfully is not one of these. Focusing on one of the pivotal points in the history of art, this work tells the story of the effect the European Surrealist painters had on the American Abstract Expressionists. Sawin communicates in clear readable prose that usually succeeds in avoiding the petentious, tautological jargon that passes for art writing elsewhere.

The interest in this story is in the way it reveals the start of a kind of artistic Munro doctrine. The European emigres with their Parisian sophistication, aloofness, and arrogance come over as Masters but then have all their best ideas stolen and Americanized before trickling back with their tails firmly between their legs to a Paris that had all but forgotten them during the War.

The period concentrated on in this book is a dividing point in the history of modern art, marking a watershed between two clear movements determined by two opposing trends, something Sawin could have perhaps emphasized more.

First there was a move towards increasing explicitness in art, which climaxed in the efforts of Surrealists like Dali, Masson, Ernst, and Matta to drag the processes of the mind out into the daylight. This tended to strip away the veils of mystery and made art almost unnecessary, so this was quickly followed by a move to mask and hide the subject of paintings as we see in the work of the abstract expressionists like Pollock, and the colorfield painters like Rothko. This was a vital and no doubt self-interested U-turn entered into by artists and the art establishment.

The view from the mind's eye....
When the 20th Century began, proto-Cubists like Cezanne and the last remnants of the Impressionist movement like Monet dominated European art. No one could foresee the rise of Surrealism. Surrealism was a reaction to it's times that exploded in France in the years following WWI and later migrated to the United States during WWII. In SUREALISM IN EXILE, Martica Sawin says surrealism was inspired by many events. Certainly the surreal literary movement led by writers such as Baudelaire affected the visual arts.Similarly, the writing of anthropologists and sociologists beginning to make "scientific" contact with traditional societies also played a role.

However, Sawin suggests it was the personal experiences of artists like Max Ernst who had served at the front with the German army in WWI and French artists like Paul Eluard who faced him on the battlefield who felt the need to explore surrealism --"Rational" realism was too narrow. Later on, others joined the movement. Onslow Ford, whose physician father had witnessed the slaughter at Gallipoli as an English medical officer and returned home bitter, became a primary player after watching his father slip into depression and madness.

Ford was to say at a later date in New York that artists needed to "tear down the veils one by one that hide the reality of our own incomprehensible universe." He and the other surrealists felt the rationalist view was too restrictive.The surrealist artist could tap into the collective unconscious described by Jung (whose book on that subject was published in 1939) and bring to light a broader view of reality. Ford said artists could escape the cubist-driven semi-abstact dead end they found themselves in by opening their third eye--the Cyclopian eye, or the mind's eye, or the inner eye, and tap into their unconscious.

Sawin's book is a history of Surrealism, a movement that borrowed and incorporated ideas from the Navaho sand painters, the Tsimshian Indians (totem poles), German fairy tales, Celtic myths, Tarot cards, and menhirs--dolmans in Brittany. From these inspirational sources the Surrealists created paintings such as "Rotary Disks" --an optical illusion comprised of revolving concentric circles; "Star, Flower, Personage, Stone' --depicting alchemical transformation; and other physical transformations of space that exploded the confines of the convential 3-D world humans see owing to their limited view of reality. Surrealist art attempted to depict time and change seen by a third eye.

SURREALISM IN EXILE is filled with photographs (black and white) of the lives and works of the Surrealists, beginning with the early works in France and ending with the later works from the New York school in the late forties.If you are interested in exploring the influences that affected the work of Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian, Kandinski and other modern artists this book is invaluable. I gave it 4 stars because there are no color photos. ... Read more

Book Description
Recaptures the high period of american modernism using Milton Resnick as a means of gaining entry to the period. talks and free-wheeling panels at the Artists' Club and the Studio School include include leading intellectuals and artists such as Leo Steinberg, Ad Reinhardt, and De Kooning. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

book falls apart
I am very happy with the contents of the book, but the binding is very poor. It is the second book and both lose pages when you read the book. It would be nice to have a whole copy to keep as I will go back to this book often. ... Read more