Abstraction over Time: The Paintings of Michael Goldberg

Abstract Expressionist painter Michael Goldberg (1924–2007) was a generation younger than the core group of New York School painters--Rothko, Pollock, de Kooning--and while he was frequently classified as a second-generation member of this illustrious group, the designation referred more to the artist’s age than the quality of his paintings. Goldberg’s ouevre is characterized by only one constant: nimble, improvisational reinvention. While he remained deeply committed to abstraction, over the course of his long career--from the 1940s until his death in 2007--Goldberg reconceptualized the visual, aesthetic and material boundaries of abstract painting. Abstraction over Time includes essays focussing on the artist’s stylistic evolutions while exploring what Goldberg’s lengthy and prolific career can teach us about the significance of abstraction as a vital twentieth-century postwar American Art.