Reports of its death were exaggerated but persistent in the art world; in mid-twentieth century America, everyone seemed to agree that portraiture was finished as a progressive art form. A groundbreaking reassessment of the reinvention of portraiture in America between 1945 and 1975 - the period when the abstract expressionists reached international prominence - this new volume presents fifty-five innovative portrait paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures. It includes works by Joan Brown, Alice Neel, Elaine de Kooning, Larry Rivers, Marisol Escobar, Alex Katz, Romare Bearden, Fairfield Porter, Jamie Wyeth, and Andy Warhol, amongst others. It also features a poem by leading New York School poet John Ashbery, specially commissioned for this book. Features a poem by leading New York School poet John Ashbery specially commissioned for this book. AUTHOR: Brandon Brame Fortune is Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. She has worked at the National Portrait Gallery since 1987. She was the Portrait Gallery’s coordinator for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006 and 2009. She was a co-curator for the 2008 National Portrait Gallery exhibition, Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture, and is the leader of the Portrait Gallery’s Portraiture Now team. Wendy Wick Reaves, curator of prints and drawings, is Interim Director of the National Portrait Gallery. Reaves established the graphic arts department at the National Portrait Gallery in 1974. The collections she has developed include fine-art prints and drawings, rare books and illustrated journals, posters, caricatures and cartoons. Reaves is the curator of numerous exhibitions for the Portrait Gallery on subjects ranging from the 18th to the 20th century. Her books include Reflections/Refractions: Self Portraiture in the Twentieth Century (2009) and Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture (2008), Eye Contact: Modern American Portrait Drawings (2002) and Celebrity Caricature in America (1998).
David C. Ward is an historian at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian institution where he has curated exhibitions on Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, and 2010’s award winning Hide/Seek. Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. His poetry has been published in PN Review and other venues; his little collection Internal Difference was published by Lintott/Carcanet in 2011.