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Introduction - This edition of New American Paintings was juried by Terrie Sultan, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The forty-four featured artists were selected from among over seven hundred who submitted entries to our fifth Northeastern competition.

We last worked with Sultan in 1997 when she juried our third Mid-Atlantic edition, a book distinguished by the preponderance of a specific subject: the still-life. Once again, Sultan has made selections that seem to favor a certain type of painting. One-third of the artists featured in this book produce work in a non-representational mode. It is the largest group of abstract painters we have ever presented.

The idea that meaning can be conveyed through abstract form and color is one of the cornerstones of twentieth century art. Indeed, the history of modern art and the rise of abstraction are inextricably linked--some would consider them to be one and the same. During the 1910s, the seminal work of painters such as Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian gave artists the license to abandon the recognizable world as a required point of departure. By mid-century, the work of American painters such as Pollock, Rothko, and DeKooning would give the enterprise of abstract painting a level of authority that all but negated the validity of representational art.

The situation is not as divisive today. As this publication attests, abstraction now peacefully coexists with representational art, as well as every other possible art form. The critical apparatus that ensured its hard-won preeminence fifty years ago, and which was no less impressive than the art it supported, has long since been anesthetized by the vapor of postmodernism. That is not to say that abstract painting itself has become numb. Contemporary masters such as Robert Ryman and Brice Marden continue to push the boundaries of painting. There is clearly a vast amount of territory still to be explored.

The abstractionists you will find on these pages each produce highly individual art. From the well-ordered paintings of Greg Parker to Brian Zink's seemingly off-handed, optically charged works on Plexiglas, there is a great deal of territory covered. During my conversations with Sultan, she commented not only about the "stylistic range" of the work she saw, but also noticed the "subtle differences between artists pursuing similar goals." The paintings of Matt McClune and David Moore offer good examples of the latter observation. While both artists produce color-based abstractions that are informed by the landscape, each has managed to delineate a unique project. Their work demonstrates how much room there is for artists to move even within the most narrowly defined of contexts.

There is, of course, a lot more than abstraction in this edition. Sultan gave a great deal of attention to all of the artists whose work she reviewed. Two that she was particularly interested in, Laylah Ali and Gerry Bergstein, have their work reproduced on the front and back covers of the printed edition. They may seem to be an unlikely pair. While the former has developed a stripped-down pictorial vocabulary that seems to repudiate the traditions of western art, the latter draws inspiration from the work of artists past and present--Philip Guston, Pieter Brueghel, and Vija Celmins figure prominently in Bergstein's pantheon. Setting aside issues of style, however, it strikes me that both artists are very concerned with the mechanics of human experience. To their credit, Ali and Bergstein are able to inject their work with an element of our experience that is all too often missing from "serious" art: humor.

Steven T. Zevitas

Link to samples from each of the 44 artists