American Art of the 1960s

American Art of the 1960s: Studies in Modern Art 1
John Elderfield (Editor)
The Museum of Modern Art, December 1991



Paperback | 8-1/2 x 10 inches | 184 pages | 137 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-0870704581 | $25.00

Publisher's Description (PDF):

This month, The Museum of Modern Art publishes American Art of the 1960s, the first issue in Studies in Modern Art, an annual scholarly journal concentrating on works of art in the Museum's collection, on the Museum's program, and related topics. Edited by John Elderfield, director of the Department of Drawings and curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, Studies in Modern Art includes essays by both Museum of Modern Art curators and outside scholars. The first issue takes as its subject aspects of the Museum's collection of American art from the 1960s and its exhibition activities during the decade.

The Museum of Modern Art's collection bears vivid testimony to the richness and diversity of an era of great intellectual ferment, during which many important and enduring movements took seed and developed. The seven articles in American Art of the 1960s discuss painting, sculpture, printmaking, architecture, theater design, and film.

dDAB Commentary:

Three years ago, Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture turned fifty, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which published the widely influential book in 1966, celebrated with a symposium organized with the University of Pennsylvania. Contributions to the symposium were finally published this summer in a handsome two-volume, slipcase publication, Complexity and Contradiction at Fifty, which I reviewed a few days ago. With this anniversary and the publication of a book marking it, it seemed like a good time to take a look at the first of MoMA's Studies in Modern Art series, which was published in 1991, on what happened to be the 25th anniversary of Venturi's book. Accordingly, one of the seven pieces in American Art of the 1960s — the only one focused on architecture — is an interview with Venturi by Stuart Wrede, then director of MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design.

The conversation between Venturi and Wrede certainly touches upon the influence of Complexity and Contradiction in the 25 years since it was first published (a second edition, with larger images in a new format, was published in 1977), but it's not limited to discussions of the book. Coming to the fore is the evolution of Venturi's (with Denise Scott Brown) thought and practice between Complexity and Contradiction and Learning from Las Vegas (with Steven Izenour) and beyond. Also, given that the interview took place in January 1991, a few years after MoMA's Deconstructivist Architecture show, Venturi and Wrede also talk about the relationship between Venturi's book and the "movement" at the forefront of architecture at the time. It's a good conversation, particularly because Venturi is very honest, even admitting when flaws in his book are brought to his attention by Wrede. Ultimately, Venturi was pleased with his book at 25 years old, seeing it as still valid even though misunderstandings of it led architects to dabble in Postmodernism rather than embrace complexity, contradiction, and mannerism as embraced by Venturi and Scott Brown.

MoMA would go on to publish only six more books in the Studies in Modern Art series, each one containing scholarship focused on MoMA itself. Architects interested in them should search out #6, on Philip Johnson's relationship with the museum, and #7, the last, on Yoshio Taniguchi's 2004 expansion. Die-hard Venturi fans will want to search for this first issue, though it's a shame that MoMA did not include it in the 50th anniversary publication, since Venturi did not participate in the symposium and his words looking back on the 1966 book at 25 years have a ring of truth even after 50 years.

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Editor Bio:

John Elderfield is Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Allen R. Adler, Class of 1967, Distinguished Curator and Lecturer at the Princeton University Art Museum; and Consultant for Special Projects at Gagosian Gallery.

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