Innocent Eye: A Passionate Look at Contemporary Art

$19.95

by Patricia Rosoff

We are grateful to the Antonia and Vladimir Kulaev Cultural Heritage Fund for a generous grant in support of this book’s creation and publication.


Award-winning journalist, artist, and educator Patricia Rosoff offers a first-hand tour of the sometimes shocking, often challenging ideas and approaches that continue to fuel the art of today. Rosoff describes the sources of contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed media in the works of such radicals as Monet, Kandinsky, and Joseph Cornell, who are now part of the tradition but who keep on catalyzing experimental innovators such as Ellen Carey, Spencer Finch, Janine Antoni, and Iñigo Manglano-Ovale.

With close (and sympathetic) consideration of conceptualists, including works by Sol LeWitt and Mierle Ukeles, and with special excitement about the inexhaustible potential in abstract art, Pat Rosoff is the gallery or museum guide you’ve always wished to have along.

by Patricia Rosoff

We are grateful to the Antonia and Vladimir Kulaev Cultural Heritage Fund for a generous grant in support of this book’s creation and publication.


Award-winning journalist, artist, and educator Patricia Rosoff offers a first-hand tour of the sometimes shocking, often challenging ideas and approaches that continue to fuel the art of today. Rosoff describes the sources of contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed media in the works of such radicals as Monet, Kandinsky, and Joseph Cornell, who are now part of the tradition but who keep on catalyzing experimental innovators such as Ellen Carey, Spencer Finch, Janine Antoni, and Iñigo Manglano-Ovale.

With close (and sympathetic) consideration of conceptualists, including works by Sol LeWitt and Mierle Ukeles, and with special excitement about the inexhaustible potential in abstract art, Pat Rosoff is the gallery or museum guide you’ve always wished to have along.

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About the Author

Patricia Rosoff was the Academic Dean of Humanities at Kingswood Oxford School, where since 1975 she taught studio art and art history. She was a long-time contributor to Art New England and art critic for the Hartford Advocate newspaper from 1994-2007. Her essays frequently appeared in Art New England and the magazine Sculpture.

Advanced Praise

“As an artist and art critic, Patricia Rosoff knows that audiences often feel stymied by contemporary art that seems to them ugly, unskilled, inaccessible, or gimmicky. ‘I hope by this book,’ Rosoff writes, ‘to loan you my eyes and my empathy, professional and personal, as I bring you with me through the galleries and museums in which I have grappled with ideas and questions that are not yet codified into art history books.’ She’s also a teacher of art and art history, which makes her the perfect companion. In these essays, Rosoff is both expert guide and life-long student, working out her own struggles with contemporary art in prose that’s as clear as it is insightful.”—Anne McDuffie, Colorado Review

“An eye-opening and revealing study. … I have always been drawn to ‘realistic- art and certainly have not given contemporary art a fair shake. I was fascinated by many stories in [Rosoff’s] book, stories such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles with the New York City sanitation workers, both the shaking of 8,000 hands to express thanks and the ballet for street-sweeping machines. And I loved the article on Benny Andrews and his ‘Revival Meeting’ piece. [Rosoff’s] writings have always lifted me and stretched me and her book did that for me again. It is a book which I will read again, but first I have promised to lend it to a friend.” — Flo Hare

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-936797-16-5