Preface

Gordon, Joan Morse

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Preface

Joan Morse Gordon

Expressionism: Art and Idea

~In January 1984 Donald E. Gordon submitted his manuscript for Expressionism: Art and Idea. Fortunately, he learned informally of its acceptance prior to his death on April tenth of that year. Still to be handled at the time were the revisions recommended by the Press’s outside reader, and the bibliography, illustrations, and index, none of...

Author

Joan Morse Gordon

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00047.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15924

Preface

In January 1984 Donald E. Gordon submitted his manuscript for Expressionism: Art and Idea. Fortunately, he learned informally of its acceptance prior to his death on April tenth of that year. Still to be handled at the time were the revisions recommended by the Press’s outside reader, and the bibliography, illustrations, and index, none of which had been completed. It was my decision, with the concurrence of Judy Metro of Yale University Press, to undertake and/or supervise the completion of the project myself. Using the many resources open to me due to the abundant goodwill left as a legacy by my husband, we began the work. His colleagues at the Frick Fine Arts Department at the University of Pittsburgh were warmly supportive and made their facilities available to me unstintingly. To Kathryn Linduff, the department chair and a former student of Don’s, I owe a particular debt for her care and kindness.

The first task was to evaluate and integrate the suggestions made by the final manuscript reader, Victor Miesel. Lucy Embick Kunz, a doctoral candidate of Professor Gordon’s, undertook that assignment as well as the organization of a system of identifying and tracking down over two hundred works of art for illustrations. Since Don had left only a checklist specifying artist, title of work, and date, discovering the present location of each work of art was a complicated puzzle. Without Lucy’s steadfast efforts, both here and in Germany, I could not have completed this endeavor. With the help of Linda Hicks and Matthew Roper of the Frick Fine Arts Department staff, Penny Cyd Lazarus, a graduate student, and Elizabeth Prelinger, then of the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, we started the international search, writing requests in English, receiving replies in German, French, Italian, and Norwegian. Information which would have been at Don’s fingertips or in his head took us more than a year to locate. Mark Haxthausen, of the University of Minnesota, kindly agreed to verify our findings by double-checking the problematic illustrations. A grant from the University of Pittsburgh Research and Development Fund cleared the way for the final processing.

Since I had revised the footnotes, I also began compiling the selected bibliography. Rich Gordon organized the index, continuing a tradition he started at age ten, when indexing his father’s Kirchner book. Tom Gordon has helped in many ways, including translating from German, proofreading, heavy hauling, and just being there.

In addition, I would like to thank Anne W. Gordon, Oxanna S. Kaufman, and Ray Ann Lockard of the Frick Fine Arts Library; Joan Weinstein, the new specialist on German expressionist art at Pitt; Martine Sheon for her sensitive suggestions; and Elaine A. King, art historian and curator at Carnegie-Mellon University, whose knowledge of both the subject and myself proved invaluable.

Finally it must be said that Don did not have the luxury of time to carry out the thorough revision any writer savors while wrapping up a creative endeavor—finding the last primary source, the better turn of phrase, a particularly exquisite clarification. Don looked on this as a seminal work, hoping that future scholars would find bones to pick and areas to explore at greater depth. Since it was our desire to make the end product completely his, we hope the reader will take the given circumstance into account and benefit from the final work of a distinguished and dedicated scholar.

The papers and Expressionist library of Donald E. Gordon are available for research purposes at the Frick Fine Arts Library at the University of Pittsburgh.

Joan Morse Gordon
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1987

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