In the Spring 1998 issue of Modern Painters, the painter Trevor Winkfield described Abstract Expressionism “as a monolith” that has been “accorded a reverential deference which … seems a mite slavish, if not downright unhealthy.” Winkfield was writing about the New York School’s domination of the standard histories of American art, and the other (often eccentric) artists who all but disappear beneath its shadow. The myth of Abstract Expressionism—with its cadre of ambitious artists and their conquest over the School of Paris—is of Promethean proportions, and the authority Abstract Expressionism holds over the art world is by no means diminished today. Many artists rue it as the last time serious art was, indeed, serious; others see it as a cultural nemesis—a patriarchal and nationalistic bugaboo—in need of deconstruction. Abstract Expressionism, epic and immovable, is a historical and artistic mom ...

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