Full Description
A fascinating examination of influential artist Arshile Gorky's relationship to New York City, exploring notions of exile, identity, and authorship
This book unpacks the relationship between Arshile Gorky and New York, focusing on the artist's early years in the city following his arrival in 1924 after fleeing the Armenian genocide. What did it mean for an artist who named himself after a Russian writer and pledged allegiance to Picasso to find his own voice in New York?
Embracing the metropolis as a locus of modernity and liberation, Gorky sought to reconcile it with his own cultural and historical inheritance. Bound together in a relationship of mutual influence, Gorky would come to shape the history of New York painting, just as the city had shaped his own work.
Edited by Ben Eastham, this richly illustrated book combines fascinating new insights into Gorky's work with broader reflections on his status as an immigrant artist, and includes essays by writer Adam Gopnik, art historians Tamar Kharatishvili, Christa Noel Robbins, and Emily Warner, alongside a meditation on Gorky's enduring influence by painter Allison Katz, and WPA-era images of New York by Berenice Abbott.
Contents
9 Introduction, Ben Eastham
19 Chronology 1902-24: Home and Exile
28 Figure Variation
32 Abstract Painting in America
39 Arshile Gorky's Fabulous Origins, Christa Noel Robbins
57 Gorky's New York Greenwich Village and Union Square 72 Nighttime, Enigma, and Nostalgia
92 Organization
107 Gorky's New York Midtown
113 Shadows and Fantastic Fancies: Gorky's Murals for the Modern City, Emily Warner
130 Marine Transportation Mural Studies
136 Mural Studies
145 Gorky with Gorky, Tamar Kharatishvili
159 Khorkom
175 Chronology 1925-39: The Invention of Gorky
184 Landscape
203 The Remake, Allison Katz
217 Chronology 1940-48: Gorky Takes His Place
225 Gorky Again, Adam Gopnik
235 List of Illustrated Works
241 Contributors
