New York Mid-Century: Post-War Capital of Culture, 1945-1965

Description

New York Mid-Century tells the story of how the Big Apple emerged as the cultural capital of the post-war world in all fields of creative endeavour, from art, architecture and design to music, theatre and dance. It was a period of intense cross-fertilization, as poets and critics mixed with artists, dealers, musicians, designers, architects, dancers and choreographers. Annie Cohen-Solal brings alive the influential critics and patrons, the legendary galleries, and the artists themselves, from Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning to Johns, Rauschenberg and Warhol. Paul Goldberger presents the modernist architectural masterpieces that created the city's sleek new profile, highlighting both public and private spaces, while Robert Gottlieb invites us to relive the heyday of the musical, explore the great jazz clubs of Harlem, and peek into the inventive studios of the dance world. Richly illustrated with hundreds of paintings, drawings, photographs, elevations, plans, posters, playbills and ephemera, New York Mid-Century is a stirring evocation of a remarkably fertile period in the city's history, the styles and aesthetics of which are now very much back in vogue.

Annie Cohen-Solal is a best-selling author whose works include biographies of Jean-Paul Sartre and kingmaker art dealer Leo Castelli. Paul Goldberger is former chief architecture critic for the New York Times and the New Yorker. Robert Gottlieb, formerly editor of the New Yorker, is now dance critic for the New York Observer.

'Catalogues the spectacular results of a city's culture catching up with its affluence ... paints a vivid picture of cultural life half a century ago' - Standpoint