Detail View: Reference and Research: Clyfford Still: Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience is a major revisionist study of the art and artists who participated in what is now regarded as the first American style of international consequence. Based on examinations of new archival material and many unknown paintings, this study relates Abstract Expressionism to the actual historical circumstances, as well as intellectual and cultural milieu, of America from the 1930s to the 1950s. Stephen Polcari reverses the traditional perspective of Abstract Expressionism as an abstract art inspired by issues of the postwar period. Examining its roots in the art of the 1930s and 1940s, he contends that Abstract Expressionism emerges as a public art that actively engaged in the social, economic, and political crises of the 1930s, and, more significantly, the experience of World War II.

Title: 
Clyfford Still: Of Plentitude and Power
Chicago Manual Citation: 
Polcari, Stephen. "Clyfford Still: Of Plentitude and Power." In Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 91-116.
Creation Date: 
1991
Work Creator Name: 
Polcari, Stephen
Work Creator Role: 
Author
Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press
Work Relation: 
Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience
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Larger Entity
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ABSTRACT: 
Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience is a major revisionist study of the art and artists who participated in what is now regarded as the first American style of international consequence. Based on examinations of new archival material and many unknown paintings, this study relates Abstract Expressionism to the actual historical circumstances, as well as intellectual and cultural milieu, of America from the 1930s to the 1950s. Stephen Polcari reverses the traditional perspective of Abstract Expressionism as an abstract art inspired by issues of the postwar period. Examining its roots in the art of the 1930s and 1940s, he contends that Abstract Expressionism emerges as a public art that actively engaged in the social, economic, and political crises of the 1930s, and, more significantly, the experience of World War II.