Selections from The Journals of Myron Stout

The Journals appear here in their most complete form to date . . . the first entries made in 1950, three years after he enrolled in the art school run by Hans Hofmann, whose teaching so profoundly affected Stout's thinking and practice. Stout used his writings to define his aesthetic ideas. The last entires are from 1966, by which time all the fundamental elements of the artist's approach had come sharply into focus, and many of his most important works were behind him. The Journals are the most articulate writings by an artist since those of Delacroix. They reflect an artist's evolution and refelect aspects of the inner worlds of all artists: investigations into philosophy, politics, literature, the inter-relationships of art forms; the history of aesthetics; the visual expression of balance. torque and tension; the relationship of abstract art to the natural world. Myron Stout (1908-1987) studied intermittently with Hans Hofman for several years in New York and Provincetown, Mass., and was mentored and befriended by him. He started exhibiting in the early 1950s at the height of th Ab-Ex movement, pursuing his own style of small scale, geometric, purist (although deeply colored), unemotional paintings, following in the tradition of Mondrian. By 1954 his focus had changed to black and white iconic shapes which established his place in American art. He had a retrospective in 1980 at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY); his works have been widely exhibited in the U.S. and Europe.