____________________________________________
H I G H L I G H T S“I knew that I was going to have flight and layover time this past weekend, so I grabbed the one book I wanted to have with me: Art in a Hairshirt. I have not finished, yet. In fact, I’ve just gotten to Max Kozlov’s piece about Amy’s writing. But, I love it! You can hear her talking. It’s like having her, sitting in front of us, legs crossed, leaning forward with elbows on her knees, smoking a cigarette while dropping a bomb on some unsuspecting fool.
I really have never “enjoyed” reading most art criticism. Few do. But this is, as you know, different. I am fascinated by her take, in 1968 or so, on technology, communications, identity and Marshall McLuhan. She decries the onslaught of images, information and resulting de-socialization then. What would she think now? ”
Robert Stearns
Co-founder of The Kitchen, independent curator,
and Inaugural Director, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus.
_________________________________________________________
Amy Goldin is “the best-kept secret of postwar American art criticism.”
Christopher Knight, Chief Art Critic, Los Angeles Times
__________________________________________________________
ADVANCE PRESS
Amy Goldin: Art in A Hairshirt, Art Criticism, 1964-1978
“The publication of this anthology is a cause for celebration. Amy Goldin was and remains one of a very few critics and art historians whose writing illuminates the experience of looking…When eye meets object, the pressure of her words makes sparks fly.”
Carolyn Lanchner, Curator, Museum of Modern Art, New York
“A persuasive maverick, Amy Goldin looked at and thought about art with few peers. Her taste and her intellect were wide-ranging, her insights original. Empathetic to artists, if bluntly so, she makes us re-consider our own reactions to them and their work.”
Richard Armstrong, Director
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum
“Amy Goldin was one of the most original and cogent critics of her time. For one thing, she completely changed the implications of the term “decorative” from pejorative to positive in her brilliant examination of Matisse’s late cut-outs; for another, she realized the central importance of Dada in the creation of the art we now call post-modern; she also paid serious aesthetic attention to so-called outsider art, minor artists and the work of non-western cultures. She had no patience with phony theorists. She wrote with brio, incisiveness and not least—humor.”
Linda Nochlin, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art,
NYU Institute of Fine Arts
“For many art writers, she’s an ‘ace in the hole’—someone to read if you want an attitude adjustment….Goldin’s writings snap ephemeral ideas into focus. The overall effect is to give the reader courage to exercise independent thinking.”
MaLin Wilson-Powell, Los Angeles Times
“Amy Goldin is one of the better late-bloomers in art-criticism. She started writing about art in her 40s, after being an artist. That hath made all the difference. Goldin was early to see art going through its nervous-breakdown and rebirth in the 1960s and 1970s. She was right in her picks; understood underdogs as well as art-stars; was beautiful and strong of voice; prickly smart; funny; and easy to read. Who could ask for anything more?”
Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic, New York Magazine