Acknowledgments

Leja, Michael

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Acknowledgments

Michael Leja

Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s

The germ of this book can be traced to a research paper written ten years ago for T. J. Clark’s seminar on the New York School at Harvard University. The distance between that tentative beginning and the present volume is long (my 1988 doctoral dissertation stands somewhere near the midpoint), and I could never have come so far without the help of a great many people. …

Author

Michael Leja

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00101.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14813

Acknowledgments

The germ of this book can be traced to a research paper written ten years ago for T. J. Clark’s seminar on the New York School at Harvard University. The distance between that tentative beginning and the present volume is long (my 1988 doctoral dissertation stands somewhere near the midpoint), and I could never have come so far without the help of a great many people.

T. J. Clark, my dissertation advisor, offered invaluable support and counsel at every stage of the study. He—and his work—helped me shape the first outlines of the project, and his subsequent critical readings of the evolving chapters enriched them profoundly, beyond the ability of footnotes to convey. Through it all, his sustained enthusiasm and encouragement have been no less important than his insightful criticisms and suggestions.

Anna Chave, Ann Gibson, and Serge Guilbaut have been extraordinarily generous in offering sensitive critical responses to earlier drafts of the text. None have allowed their disagreements with some of my arguments (or my disagreements with theirs) to impede constructive intellectual exchange.

Many other colleagues and friends have made substantive contributions to the following pages: Carl Belz, Holly Clayson, John Czaplicka, Whitney Davis, Michael Fried, Reinhold Heller, Walter Hopps, Michael Kimmelman, Susan Manning, Richard Meyer, John O’Brian, Larry Silver, Lisa Tickner, Nancy Troy, David Van Zanten, Anne Wagner, Karl Werckmeister, and Henri Zerner. Michael Auping, Serge Guilbaut, and Susan Witkie gave me valuable early opportunities to test some of the ideas in public forums. Graduate and undergraduate students in my New York School seminars at Northwestern University, Harvard, and MIT brought new energy and fresh perceptions to the subject and frequently led me to rethink my arguments.

My research at the Boston and Washington offices of the Archives of American Art was greatly facilitated by the assistance of Robert Brown, Erika Ell, and Cecilia Chin. The gracious hospitality of Glenn McMillan and Richard Desroche, Pauline McGuire, Tina Petra and Ken Wong, and Davia Temin enabled me to carry out research in New York and Washington. Yve-Alain Bois, Marie Foley, Helen Harrison, Jason McCoy, Nina Nielsen, Sanford Schwartz, and E. V. Thaw helped me gain access to important materials. Judy Metro and Cynthia Wells at Yale University Press patiently and capably directed the transformation of manuscript into book.

Financial support for research and writing was provided by the Getty Grant Program, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Whiting Foundation, Harvard University, and Northwestern University’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. A grant from the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts at Northwestern University helped to defray the costs of photographs and reproduction rights.

Over the decade I worked on this book, I drew heavily upon the unfailing encouragement, confidence, and moral support of my parents, Margaret and Stanley Leja, and my family, especially Suzanne Barnes. My gratitude to them is deeper than I can say.

Finally, Margaret Werth has had a profound influence on this study—more extensive, no doubt, than I realize. Her trenchant criticisms and energetic challenges repeatedly opened up my thinking and led me in new and productive directions. In the final stages of work, intellectual stimulation was only one of the many welcome effects of her daily presence.

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