The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning Book

I was expecting this book to deal with the art itself and the development of styles from a critical point of view, as Dore Ashton is a well-known art critic. Instead, it is more a social-cultural history of why art in New York developed as it did. Very well written. Ashton takes us from early beginnings, when aspiring artists hightailed it out of rural America and headed for New York--the only place that might offer anything like an art school; describes the isolation of painters in America who had virtually no contact with developments in Europe, nor much interest from the American public; then the terrible poverty of the depression and the growing fear of war; finally the war itself, which drove a wave of European artists to American shores, enriching and validating the growth of the New York school.

Ashton describes the formation of a community of artists who had little in common esthetically, simply due to proximity and shared destitution. But finally came the unexpected shock of material success, something that had never occurred to them as a realistic possibility. Once the money came, the community became confused (Mark Rothko being a case in point) and disunited. Ashton quotes Auden: "The fellowship of suffering lasts only so long as none of the sufferers can escape. Open a door through which many but probably not all can escape, and the fellowship disintegrates."

The heyday of New York abstract expressionism probably really lasted only about ten years, but the reader experiences its gradual evolution over a much longer period: it wasn't born overnight. Some may find this to be a bit of a 'textbook,' but anyone interested in the subject, as I am, will enjoy the read and the information.