Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This solid, authoritative presentation of Gorky's pivotal art of the 1940s accompanies an exhibit of paintings and drawings showing this year at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., as well as Buffalo and Fort Worth. Biographical and art-historical essays by Auping, a Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth curator, as well as Dore Ashton and Matthew Spender summarize the critical consensus of Gorky, placing him between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism in the development of 20th-century art. Excellent reproductions of the paintings and drawings in the show are supplemented by close-ups from several paintings, photographs of Gorky, and selections from Gorky's letters. While not a comprehensive or groundbreaking work, this volume is an excellent summary of or introduction to Gorky for both general and informed lay readers.‘Kathryn Wekselman, M.Ln., Cincinnati (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

This is the catalog of an exhibition of selected Gorky paintings and drawings from the period 1941-48, held at the National Gallery of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (co-organized by the latter two institutions). The catalog includes good color illustrations of all 24 paintings and 18 drawings in the exhibition, and several more illustrations are interspersed among the introduction and three essays in the catalog. A clear and succinct picture of Gorky emerges from the introduction and essays, which provide an overview of Gorky's art, his early life, the formal aspects of his art, and imagery of his late works. Several letters from the artist, which were written at the time Gorky was at work on these paintings and drawings, are included, along with a selected bibliography and a selected list of exhibitions and reviews. Some have argued that the late works of Gorky represent his breakdown, not breakthrough, years, and the material of this catalog obviously is more limited in its scope than that found in Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater's The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue (CH, Sept'82). However, as a close-up view of Gorky's art during the last decade of his life, this is a useful and recommended addition to college libraries. G. Eager; Bucknell University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Dore Ashton was born Dorothea Shapiro in Newark, New Jersey on May 21, 1928. She received a bachelor's degree in literature from the University of Wisconsin in 1949 and a master's degree in art history from Harvard University in 1950. After leaving Harvard, she began writing reviews for Art Digest and soon became an associate editor. In 1955, she became an art reviewer for The New York Times. She left the newspaper in November 1960. She taught art history at the School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union and the New School.

She wrote numerous books during her lifetime including The Unknown Shore: A View of Contemporary Art, A Reading of Modern Art, The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning, A Joseph Cornell Album, "Yes, but ¿: A Critical Study of Philip Guston, A Fable of Modern Art, American Art Since 1945, About Rothko, and Noguchi East and West. Many of her essays were collected in Out of the Whirlwind: Three Decades of Arts Commentary. In 1963, the College Art Association gave her and the architecture critic Lewis Mumford the first Frank Jewett Mather Awards for distinguished arts journalism. She died on January 30, 2017 at the age of 88.

(Bowker Author Biography)