About this Event
Join us for a conversation with art historian and journalist Amy Newman to celebrate her new book, a groundbreaking biography of one of America's leading abstract expressionists. She will be in conversation with Michael Brenson, followed by a signing.
PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.
Can't attend? (please specify that you would like it signed in the comments box at checkout).
Amy Newman's Barnett Newman: Here is the definitive biography of a transformational American artist and the city that shaped him.
Barnett Newman (1905–1970), a founding member of the abstract expressionist movement, was a contemporary of such figures as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still. He left behind only 118 finished paintings, six sculptures, and 83 acknowledged drawings, yet is often regarded as the greatest painter to have emerged after the Second World War. Barnett Newman is the definitive biography of a charismatic New Yorker who by defying the rules created an art of the sublime. This landmark book features original research conducted over decades, using scores of interviews, oral histories, and previously unseen correspondence to paint a richly textured portrait of a creative sage who became an exemplar of the artist-citizen. Born in New York to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, he grandly aspired to involve himself in every detail of the city’s life. He was a crusader for the civil service, ran against La Guardia for mayor, worked as a teacher, wrote poetry, criticism, and manifestos, produced political plays, and promoted other artists—all before painting a mature work of his own in his early forties. Newman began with none of the qualities once considered indispensable for a master artist, such as training, apprenticeship, or natural facility. But he possessed a galvanizing intellect and a conviction that aesthetic expression is an ecstatic declaration of existence and an assertion of human dignity.
Drawing on previously unpublished sources gleaned from full access to Newman’s archives, Amy Newman presents a portrait of a maverick whose works are among the most enduring of the twentieth century and whose influence continues to this day.
Amy Newman is an art historian and journalist. She is the author of Challenging Art: “Artforum” 1962–1974 and the editor (with Irving Sandler) of Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. She is not related to Barnett Newman.
Michael Brenson is an art critic and art historian. He received a Ph.D in art history from Johns Hopkins University and was an art critic for The New York Times from 1982 to 1991. He is a Getty Scholar, Guggenheim Fellow and Clark Fellow, and the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant. His biography of David Smith was published in 2022 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is the Artistic Director of the Jonathan and Barbara Silver Foundation.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 0.00
