The pioneers of abstraction—the Cubists, the Abstract Expressionists, the Minimalists—emerged from firm and identifiable aesthetic roots and developed their own philosophies. In the competitive ...

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 ...

In his preface to Abstract Art: A Global History—arriving this month from Thames & Hudson—Joseph Low (“Pepe”) Karmel, a professor of art history at New York University, writes that the goal of the ...