By Debra Bricker Balken with an essay by Jay Bochner
Published in 2003 by the AFA in association with D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.
175 pages, 111 illus. (84 in color), 9 × 7 in.
Paper • ISBN 1-885444-24-9 • $25.00 (AFA/members only)
Cloth • ISBN 1-891024-49-3 • $35.00 (D.A.P.)

This catalogue proposes a new reading of American modernism, one generated primarily by the debate between artists in the circles of Alfred Stieglitz and Marcel Duchamp during the early twentieth century. When Duchamp moved from Paris to New York in 1915, he was disappointed by the predominantly nature-based abstraction he observed, publicly proclaiming that American artists were too dependent on outmoded European traditions and had overlooked their greatest subjects—the skyscraper and the machine. Meanwhile, the artists associated with Alfred Stieglitz and his “291” gallery remained loyal to their belief in nature as a source of ongoing renewal for visual culture, and emphasized the crucial role of intuition and spirituality within their art. The crossfire between Duchamp and Stieglitz and their respective circles would define a critical moment in early twentieth-century American art.