Product Review

This volume provides a fresh look at The Museum of Modern Art's collection of painting and sculpture as it stands in 2015. The Museum's present holdings are the result of almost 90 years of collaborative effort between its curators and trustees, and the nearly 300 objects represented in this book affirm the convictions of the Museum's founders in 1929, who believed that modern art rivals in its greatness the art of any previous era. The catalogue opens with an essay by Ann Temkin, the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, which addresses the historical construction of the Museum's collection and explores the shifting issues that have guided its acquisitions. The thoughtful selection of the works included in this catalogue highlights the range of artworks and ideas that constitute the evolving foundation of the Museum's collection. The cumulative result of decades of collection-building is chronicled in the richly illustrated pages, including the legendary favorites of the collection, such as Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" (1889), Pablo Picasso's "Girl Before a Mirror" (1932) and Andy Warhol's "Gold Marilyn Monroe" (1962). The selection also celebrates lesser-known masterworks that underscore the vast breadth of the collection, such as Diego Rivera's "Agrarian Leader Zapata" (1931), Horace Pippin's "Abe Lincoln, The Great Emancipator" (1942) and Niki de Saint Phalle's "Shooting Painting American Embassy" (1961). The story continues through to the present, including landmark works such as Gerhard Richter's "October 18, 1977" (1988), Kara Walker's "Gone: A Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b'tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart" (1994) and Cai Guo-Qiang's "Borrowing Your Enemy's Arrows" (1998). With 126 years spanning the distance between the works on the first and last pages of the book, Painting and Sculpture offers the opportunity to immerse oneself in the multitude of artistic approaches encompassed under the banner of modern art.