John Moore

Inventing Reality: The Paintings of John Moore (Hardcover)
by Therese Dolan (Author)

From Publishers Weekly
In still lifes that include molded plastic chairs, television sets, Kleenex boxes and other mundane objects, and cityscapes depicting decaying factory buildings, row houses on drab city streets and dreary industrial suburbs, Moore portrays elements of contemporary America not often celebrated in art. In this perceptive monograph, Dolan, associate professor of art at Temple University, shows how Moore draws on the tradition of American realistic painters such as Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth to ennoble the prosaic. At the same time, she places him in the mainstream of contemporary art, demonstrating that his version of new realism?based on the geometry of walls, rooftops, fire escapes, windows, water towers, smokestacks and similar unglamorous aspects of the urban landscape?is related to modernist abstraction as well as to representational styles of the past. Her penetrating analysis of Moore's paintings makes them meaningful even to those who equate realistic landscape painting with picture-postcard prettiness. The book is amply illustrated with excellent color reproductions.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description
A monograph on the American realist painter John Moore. Dolan examines Moore's development from his large paintings of household objects on tables in the 1960s and '70s to his later work, which was inspired by his growing preoccupation with technology. Technically dazzling selections of still lifes, city, suburban and industrial scenes.