Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

Truitt, Anne; Truitt, Alexandra

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Description: Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

BOOKAlways Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31889

Spanning more than fifty years, this comprehensive volume collects the letters, journal entries, interviews, lectures, reviews, and remembrances of the groundbreaking twentieth-century artist Anne Truitt (1921–2004). Alexandra Truitt, the artist’s daughter and a leading expert on her work, has carefully selected these writings, most of which are previously unpublished, from the artist’s papers at Bryn Mawr College as well as private holdings.

Revelations about the artist’s life abound. Among Truitt’s earliest writings are excerpts from journals written more than a decade before her first artistic breakthrough, in which she establishes themes that would occupy her for decades. In later texts she shares uncommon insights into the practices of other artists and writers, both predecessors and peers. Like Truitt’s published journals, these writings offer a compelling narrative of her development as an artist and efforts to find her voice as a writer. They show that Truitt’s creative impulse to translate the inner workings of her mind into a symbolic language, so important to understanding her sculpture, predates her art.

Author

Anne Truitt, Alexandra Truitt (Editor)

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date April 2023 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300260410

EISBN 9780300279016

Illustrations 63

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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List of illustrations

Installation view
A Page from Anne Truitt's Notebook
Anne Truitt in her studio, Dallas, Texas
Anne Truitt with sculptures at André Emmerich Gallery, New York
The Truitt Family (from left: Alexandra, Sam, James, Mary, Anne) at Konpira (Kotohira-gu) Shrine, Shikoku, Japan
James Lee Byars's performance at the Kyoto Independent Exhibition
James Lee Byars's performance at the Kyoto Independent Exhibition
Anne Truitt and Clement Greenberg attending the exhibition Two Decades of American Painting at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Anne Truitt in her studio, Tokyo
Louisa Jenkins in her studio on Partington Ridge, Big Sur, California
Installation view of Anne Truitt 1967, Minami Gallery, Tokyo
Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map
David Smith with Royal Incubator, 1949
Anne Truitt in her studio, Washington, DC
Three
Knight's Heritage
Anne Truitt standing next to Tor, 1962, in her Twining Court studio, Washington, DC
A Wall for Apricots
The Hatch Family
Anne Truitt's studio, Washington, DC
Installation view of Anne Truitt: Sculpture and Drawings, 1961–1973, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Installation view of Anne Truitt: Sculpture and Drawings, 1961–1973, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Installation view of Anne Truitt: Sculpture and Drawings, 1961–1973, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Goldsborough
Morning Child
First
First
Green: Five
Green: Five
Two
Mary's Light
Lea
Catawba
Installation view of Anne Truitt: Sculpture and Drawings, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Shrove
Gloucester
Bloomsday
Dawn City
Installation view of Anne Truitt: Sculpture and Drawings, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Down
Morning Choice
Students viewing Summer Treat, 1968
Installation view of Anne Truitt: Sculpture and Drawings, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Anne Truitt's studio, Washington, DC
Anne Truitt in her studio, Washington, DC
Installation view of Anne Truitt: Sculpture 1962–2004, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
Marie Coca with Arbi
Anne Truitt and John Dolan, Canada
Southern Elegy
Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight
Isamu Noguchi with Kouros, 1945
Hardcastle
Hardcastle
Insurrection
Installation view of Painting: Now and Forever, Part II, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
Watauga
Anne Truitt's studio, Washington, DC
Installation view of Anne Truitt: Sound, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
Anne Truitt, Dallas, Texas
New England Legacy
First Requiem
First Requiem
Studio view of Parva LXXII

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Contents

Anne Truitt, Alexandra Truitt (Editor)

Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

Contents

Author

Anne Truitt, Alexandra Truitt (Editor)

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31890

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Preface

Anne Truitt, Alexandra Truitt (Editor)

Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

The impact of Anne Truitt’s art is usually attributed to its formal qualities, particularly its bold use of geometry and color, in which she charted a new direction for sculpture in the early 1960s. But the inspiration for her art was always fundamentally personal: a lifetime of her own memories and sensations. This core creative impulse — to translate the inner workings of her mind...

Author

Anne Truitt, Alexandra Truitt (Editor)

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31891

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Free

Foreword

Miguel de Baca

Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

I first saw Anne Truitt’s sculptures in person at the exhibition “A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–1968” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2004. I remember, as I walked through the galleries, that I was completely felled by Hardcastle (1962), a tall, rectangular black plinth on a short black base,...

Author

Miguel de Baca

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31892

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1940s and 1950s

Anne Truitt

Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

I am always reaching toward meaning, seeking in every act, every observation, to discover, as one moving rapidly past a grilled garden gate, the expanse behind the phenomenon — the perspective within which the phenomenon has a place...

Author

Anne Truitt

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.2-30

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31894

Chapter subject tags:Truitt, Anne, 1921-2004Women artists--United States--20th centuryArtists' writings, American--20th century

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1960s

Anne Truitt

Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

André decided that I should call myself “Truitt,” and be consistent, insistent, in that course. Women artists, he pointed out, were generally thought to be not as serious as men artists; people tended to discount an exhibit by a woman...

Author

Anne Truitt

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.31-91

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31895

Chapter subject tags:Truitt, Anne, 1921-2004Women artists--United States--20th centuryArt galleries, Commercial--United States--20th centurySculpture, American--20th centuryByars, James LeeSmith, David, 1906-1965Greenberg, Clement, 1909-1994Noland, Kenneth, 1924-2010Caro, Anthony, 1924-2013Jenkins, LouisaMinimal art--United StatesArtists' writings, American--20th century

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1970s

Anne Truitt

Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

WALTER HOPPS: One thing that I haven’t talked to you about at all is other artists. You mentioned that you had seen Georgia O’Keeffe’s barn — the painting at the Museum of Modern Art...

Author

Anne Truitt

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.92-192

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31896

Chapter subject tags:Truitt, Anne, 1921-2004Women artists--United States--20th centurySculpture, American--20th centuryMinimal art--United StatesGreenberg, Clement, 1909-1994Noland, Kenneth, 1924-2010Louis, Morris, 1912-1962Minimal art--United States--ExhibitionsArtists' writings, American--20th century

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1980s

Anne Truitt

Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

In the opening chapter of Patrick White’s novel Voss, the German protagonist, who has come to Australia to explore a way across this mysterious, then-unknown continent, remarks to Laura Trevelyan...

Author

Anne Truitt

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.193-282

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31897

Chapter subject tags:Truitt, Anne, 1921-2004Women artists--United States--20th centurySculpture, American--20th centuryMinimal art--United StatesArtists' writings, American--20th century

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

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1990s

Anne Truitt

Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

ANNE TRUITT: In 1961 I made a series of drawings in apricot color — strange, free-floating polygonal shapes set free in space...

Author

Anne Truitt

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.283-357

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31898

Chapter subject tags:Truitt, Anne, 1921-2004Women artists--United States--20th centurySculpture, American--20th centuryMinimal art--United StatesGreenberg, Clement, 1909-1994Noland, Kenneth, 1924-2010Morisot, Berthe, 1841-1895Noguchi, Isamu, 1904-1988Cornell, JosephMinimal art--United States--ExhibitionsArtists' writings, American--20th century

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2000s

Anne Truitt

Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

Layered paint before because thought of it as color — used paint in the service of color. Now in service of itself...

Author

Anne Truitt

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.358-362

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31899

Chapter subject tags:Truitt, Anne, 1921-2004Women artists--United States--20th centurySculpture, American--20th centuryMinimal art--United StatesArtists' writings, American--20th century

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

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