Arshile Gorky, Goats On The Roof

A Life In Letters and Documents

Matthew Spender

This massive biography accompanies a major new exhibition of the work of Armenian-born painter Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), who is increasingly considered an important influence on the development of abstract expressionism. The book tells his story through many voices: his letters, sent and received; the correspondence of family and friends; pivotal reviews and criticism; newspaper articles and other essential documents. From Gorky’s turbulent childhood fleeing the Armenian genocide in Turkey, to his adulthood in the United States, to his suicide in his forties after a traumatic series of physical and emotional setbacks, this biography offers an intimate window into the artist’s life.

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Isabelle Graw

High Price
Art Between The Market and Celebrity

During almost any conversation about art, the elephant in the room – whether it’s mentioned or not – is money. Paradoxically, in a world in which the global art market often plays the role of final arbiter on artistic matters, art history is still required as an insurance policy. For just as market success is now able to generate cultural relevance in the long term, it also depends on the kind of symbolic meaning for which art history and criticism are still decisively responsible. German writer, curator and academic Isabelle Graw, a founder of the respected Berlin-based journal Texte zur Kunst, tackles this quandary in a stimulating book for our times. Translation from the German by Nicholas Grindell.

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