Polychrome Profusion, Selected Art Criticism: 1990-2002 by Raphael Rubinstein

Raphael Rubinstein
Critical Praise

Raphael Rubinstein
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Polychrome Profusion, Selected Art Criticism: 1990-2002
By Raphael Rubinstein

ISBN 1-889097-64-0

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In March of 2003, Art in America published Raphael Rubinstein's seismic essay "A Quiet Crisis" which decried the state of art criticism as passive and interpretive and urged a return to value judgment and qualitative comparison in its analysis of contemporary art.* This essay has incited a broad and heated discussion in the art world about what criticism should be and might become. Polychrome Profusion: Selected Art Criticism 1990-2002 (Hard Press Editions, 2003) is the body of writing that lead to Rubinstein's challenge.

Visual pleasure, formal complexity, and the erotics of abstraction are the themes at the core of this book. The collection opens with essays on three artists who joined the post-World War II wave of American expatriates in Paris, and whose work was deeply influenced by Matisse: Norman Bluhm, Shirley Jaffe and George Sugarman. They constitute, Rubinstein argues, an alternative tradition to the dominant styles of Pop Art, Minimalism and Conceptual Art.

The selection of essays will be treasured by artists, students, educators and art enthusiasts. As a New York arts writer and poet, Rubinstein documents the international contemporary art scene. Themes at the core of this collection are visual pleasure, formal complexity and the erotics of abstraction Rubinstein writes about such artists as Shirley Jaffe, Norman Bluhm, Philip Guston, George Sugarman, David Reed, Francesco Clemente and other artists of our time. Rubinstein has been a major arts writer and critic for the past 17 years and is currently Senior Editor at Art in America.

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