Dorothea Rockburne

The first comprehensive, career-spanning study of American artist Dorothea Rockburne. This in-depth retrospective of American abstract artist Dorothea Rockburne's (b. 1932) seven-decade career considers the full scope and varied range of her elegant yet deceptively simple sculptures, installations, and paintings. Following Rockburne from her time at Black Mountain College in the 1950s, where she developed a lifelong interest in mathematical concepts such as topology and set theory, through her period as a member of the Judson Dance Theater to the present day and her continuing artistic practice, this volume sheds new light on the mix of deep conceptual thinking and physicality that informs Rockburne's work. Never-before-published archival writings, studies, and drawings accompany essays that focus on different aspects of Rockburne's art, including her painstaking creative process, use of such nontraditional materials as chipboard, cup grease, paper, and linen, and the ways that Rockburne emphasizes subjectivity and emotion. Lavishly illustrated and featuring scholarship that puts her work in dialogue with feminism, minimalism, and wider contemporary abstraction, this is the definitive resource on Rockburne's expansive and groundbreaking oeuvre.