It is hard to tell if abstract painting actually got worse [after the 1960s], if it merely stagnated, or if it simply looked bad in comparison to the hopes its own accomplishments had raised. —Frank ...

Thomas Downing, “Center Grid” (ca. 1960), detail (Image by the author for Hyperallergic) WASHINGTON, DC — The magazine selection in the visitors’ waiting room at the George Bush Center for ...

DENVER — The story goes like this. It is 1950. Virginia-born painter Judith Godwin learns that dancer and choreographer Martha Graham will be in the region and all Godwin can think about is her desire ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Hashtags have become a standard in ...

Abstract art often gets an undeserved bad rap. Many people famously dismissed Jackson Pollock‘s signature drip paintings in the 1950s, for instance, as being something that a trained chimpanzee could ...