This is the most thorough and detailed monograph on the artwork of Raymond Jonson. He is one of many artists of the first half of the twentieth-century who demonstrate the richness and diversity of an under-appreciated period in the history of American art. Visualizing the spiritual was one of the fundamental goals of early abstract painting in the years before and during World War I. Artists turned to alternative spirituality, the occult, and mysticism, believing that the pure use of line, shape, color, light and texture could convey spiritual insight. Jonson was steadfastly dedicated to this goal for most of his career and he always believed that modernist and abstract styles were the most effective and compelling means of achieving it.
This is the most thorough and detailed monograph on the artwork of Raymond Jonson.
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Raymond Jonson and Twentieth Century American Art:
Reconsidering the Canonical in American Art History and the Spiritual in
American Modernist Painting
Chapter One: "Art Is as Broad as Space": Jonsons Early Years in the West and
Chicago
Chapter Two: "The Land of Sunshine and Color and Tragedy": New Mexico and
Jonsons Landscape Paintings and Compositions
Chapter Three: "These Are the Second Attack on the Abstract": the Thematic,
Conceptual Series Paintings of 1929-1936
Chapter Four: "A More Intense Participation in the Life of the Spirit":
Jonsons First Totally Abstract Paintings, His Theories of Art and the
Transcendental Painting Group
Chapter Five: "Fast Arriving and Spontaneous Combustions of Colorspaceline
and Design": Absolute Painting, 1938-1950
Chapter Six: "Causing the Surface to Come to Life": Jonsons Late Career,
1950-1978
References
Index
Herbert R. Hartel, Jr.
