From Publishers Weekly
Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Phillip Guston, Jasper Johns and many other luminaries of postwar 20th-century art were part of a celebrated series of interviews British art critic David Sylvester (Looking at Giacometti) recorded for the BBC during the 1960s. Transcribed, edited and collected here as Interviews with American Artists (along with a handful of more recent interviews with Jeff Koons, Alex Katz, Cy Twombly, and others), the interviews transport readers back to a moment of boundless artistic confidence and possibility. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Sylvester, an intrepid and perceptive art critic and author of celebrated books on Giacometti and Francis Bacon, conducted a series of in-depth interviews with cutting-edge American artists for the BBC in the 1960s. Most of his conversations with such trailblazers as Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler, and Jasper Johns have never been published, and all make for fascinating reading as artists who prefer to express themselves with line, color, and form struggle to find words to describe their profoundly intuitive aesthetic choices, often to stunning effect. Abstract art was then new and astonishing, and it remains radical and mysterious, a state Sylvester's careful querying of the likes of sculptors Nevelson and Smith and painters Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Rauschenberg richly illuminates as his subjects reveal the rich complexity of their influences, intentions, and techniques. A series of recent interviews with Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, and Carl Andre, among others, highlights the ongoing vitality and diversity of American art, and all that readers will miss in the wake of Sylvester's recent death. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Publishers Weekly
The interviews transport readers back to a moment of boundless artistic confidence and possibility.


Review
?The best living writer in English about modern art.? ? Grey Gowrie


Book Description
David Sylvester has been called "the best living writer in English about modern art" (Daily Telegraph). With his expertise, sympathy, and provocative style, he is unique in his ability to talk freely with influential artists. This astounding book includes 21 interviews, recorded over the past forty years, with leading American artists. Together they illuminate all the great developments in American art. Here are the views of David Smith, Richard Serra, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, and more. Conversations from the 1960s vividly conjure up the New York art scene immediately after the war, when the newly arrived Europeans met the Americans who had worked together in the Depression, their different traditions colliding and fusing as they walked the city, talked and worked 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.


From the Publisher
Not for sale in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Canada

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 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. Here are the views of David Smith, Richard Serra, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, and more.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Phillip Guston, Jasper Johns and many other luminaries of postwar 20th-century art were part of a celebrated series of interviews British art critic David Sylvester (Looking at Giacometti) recorded for the BBC during the 1960s. Transcribed, edited and collected here as Interviews with American Artists (along with a handful of more recent interviews with Jeff Koons, Alex Katz, Cy Twombly, and others), the interviews transport readers back to a moment of boundless artistic confidence and possibility. ( Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly