The Artist's Voice Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists

To quote Robert Hughes, "All critics concerned with American painting will be Kuh's debtors from now on." Interviewed in the 1960s, the painters and sculptors Katharine Kuh spoke with provide insights into their work that remain illuminating and relevant. The author allows the artists to commentin their own wordson their inspirations, philosophies, and creative processes and to debunk common myths about their work. Sometimes the results are surprising: abstract painter Josef Albers confesses to being a realist, while realist painter Ivan Albright firmly denies the charge. Marcel Duchamp professes surprise over the controversy stirred by hisNude Descending a Staircase,and Edward Hopper insists that his supposed themes of loneliness and nostalgia are entirely unintentional.

Katharine Kuh (1904–1994) was the first curator of modern painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, an art editor of the Saturday Review, and the author of Léger, Art Has Many Faces, Break-Up: The Core of Modern Art, and The Open Eye: In Pursuit of Art.