New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century

last updated 8 January 2015

New York's City's rise as the creative center of the international art world began roughly in 1948 with Willem de Kooning's first one-man show in a Manhattan gallery. Over the next 25 years, the city itself'”its energy, sheer size, contradictions'”became muse to a pantheon of hard-living artists who changed forever the course of art history. Jed Perl, art critic for The New Republic, chronicles the many artistic styles competing for attention during those hothouse years. His narrative takes the reader into both the studios of solitary artists and such celebrated gathering places as the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village, while also giving full attention to the critics who wrote about and the dealers who sold the artists' work.

Like an abstract expressionist painting by Jackson Pollock, Perl's book overflows with 'œcountless engaging and colorful strands,' said Tom Freudenheim in The New York Sun. Though New York is the book's subject, 'œhe is never parochial about it.' He also resists lumping such seminal figures as Pollock, de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, and Marcel Duchamp into easy categories, and recognizes the importance of such outside influences as Bay Area artists Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. Teasing these numerous narrative strands apart 'œwhile also weaving them together is Mr. Perl's most impressive achievement.'