Viewing page 32 of 58

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

THE PAINTINGS OF ARSHILE GORKY: A CRITICAL CATALOGUE
by Robert Goldwater and Jim M. Jordan

Arshile Gorky has central importance in the history of modern American painting. Not only was Gorky a member of the founding generation of the New York School, but his work reflects with unusual clarity the stylistic strains of Cubism and Surrealism which nurtured the new painting. Gorky's mature work of the 1940's presents a unique and powerful beauty: structually rigorous, it is at the same time, poetically, infinitely evocative. 

The Paintings of Arshile Gorky presents Gorky's entire known production in the oil medium. All of the paintings from the early 1920's to 1948 are here definitively presented in chronological order, each with a large photograph and extensive documentation. No book with such a purpose has ever appeared on Gorky. This catalogue will serve as a standard reference for all future writing on Gorky, and will shed light on the work of many of his important contemporaries such as Davis, Graham, and de Kooning. 

During the seven years of its preparation, the book has benefited from the generous cooperation of the museums, individual collectors, and galleries who own Gorky paintings. The Gorky Estate has cooperated fully in this undertaking. 

The catalogue proper consists of approximately 370 entries, an example of which is attached. I have personally examined all of the Gorky Estate works and a high percentage of the others. Strict scholarly standards have been applied to the collection and evaluation of data. Well over a third of the works presented are previously unpublished. In presenting the whole story of Gorky's painting instead of only a small much-reproduced portion, new stylistic relationships come to the fore, and (particularly in the earlier years) whole new stylistic periods within Gorky's work come to light. 

Preceding the catalogue will be a re-publication of one of Robert Goldwater's articles or lectures on Gorky. (Professor Goldwater died before completing his planned essay.) My own short text will follow, addressing itself to the new discoveries of the catalogue and outlining their implications for the chronology and stylistic history of Gorky's art. A brief preface will explain the technical details of the catalogue. 

The Paintings of Arshile Gorky will be published by a major university press, in a large and handsome format. Each painting will be illustrated by a half-page plate, and a number will be larger. There will be at least eight color plates, several of unpublished works. A new scholarly precedent will be set for the study of American artists of Gorky's generation. This book is designed for both easy reference use and extended enjoyment of Gorky's art.