DESTROY THE PICTURE

The first book to take a transnational view of destruction in abstract painting of the postwar period. Painting the Void: 1949-1962 focuses on one of the most significant consequences of the rise of gestural abstraction in twentieth-century painting: artists' lite ral assault on the picture plane. Responding to the social and political climate of the postwar period--especially the crisis of hum anity resulting from the atomic bomb--international artists ripped, cut, burned, or affixed objects to the traditionally two-dimensi onal canv...[Read more]