"The abstract paintings of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Lee Krasner, Clyfford Still, Helen Frankenthaler, and others revolutionized the art world in the 1940s and 1950s and continue to inspire passionate arguments to this day. What were these artists trying to achieve? Who were the critical voices of the time that rallied public interest in Abstract Expressionism and sparked rancorous debate?" "Drawing on recent critical, historical, and biographical work, this lavishly illustrated book offers a sharp new focus on a pivotal art movement. It also presents an extensive commentary on the two most influential critics of postwar American art - Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg - whose powerful views shaped perceptions of Abstract Expressionism and other contemporary art movements. In one essay, Norman L. Kleeblatt traces the influence of Abstract Expressionism into the mid-1970s and examines its connection to subsequent art styles.

Foreword / Joan Rosembaum --
Preface ; Introduction: Action, abstraction, reaction / Norman L. Kleeblatt --
Abstract expressionism : a cultural timeline, 1940-1976 / Maurice Berger --
Pates --
Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg : convergences and divergences / Irving Sandler --
Greenberg, Rosenberg, and postwar American art / Norman L. Kleeblatt --
Our "modern sensibility" / Caroline A. Jones --
Harold Rosenberg and the American action painters / Debra Bricker Balken --
Sculptors and critics, arenas and complaints / Douglas Dreishpoon --
Abstraction and representation : a brief history / Charlotte Eyerman --
"That oldtime Jewish sect called American art criticism" / Mark Godfrey --
Intellectuals after modernism / Morris Dickstein.