The American Dream: pop to the present, published to accompany an exhibition at the British Museum, presents an overview of the development of American printmaking since 1960, paying particular attention to such key figures as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ed Ruscha as well as Louise Bourgeois, Kara Walker, and Julie Mehretu.
With more than 200 key works by nearly seventy artists, this fully illustrated publication traces the creative momentum in American printmaking over the past six decades—from the moment pop art burst onto the New York and West Coast scenes in the early 1960s, the rise of minimalism, conceptual art, and photorealism in the 1970s, to the different responses of artists working today. Using innovative techniques and appealing to a wide audience, American printmaking was the ideal medium to express the USA’s power and influence, and to highlight contentious issues such as race, AIDS, and feminism.
Reviews
A preeminent guide to American printmaking of the last half-century. British Museum curators Stephen Coppel and Catherine Daunt and Art in Print editor in chief Susan Tallman provide vivid context to the rise of post-World War II ateliers and their interaction with artists such as Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Chuck Close, Richard Diebenkorn, Jim Dine, Ed Ruscha, and to lesser-known but brilliant printmakers Richard Bosman, May Stevens and Lee Lozano. [With] text and opulent illustrations covering regional influences, artistic styles such as photorealism, abstraction, and minimalism, essays discuss printmaking, feminism, political dissent, gender issues, and racial identity.
— Library Journal
Contributors
Stephen Coppel
Author
Stephen Coppel is curator of modern prints and drawings at the British Museum and author of The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock.
Catherine Daunt
Author
Catherine Daunt is Monument Trust Project Curator at the British Museum.
Susan Tallman
Author
Susan Tallman is editor-in-chief of the journal Art in Print and author of The Contemporary Print: from Pre-Pop to Postmodern.
