"Robert Rosenblum is one of the most acute observers of modern American art - a critic, curator, professor, and art historian whose writings helped establish the reputations of many important artists and who continues to influence the contemporary art scene. This book collects Rosenblum's fifty best essays from the last forty years - most never before published in book form and two of them unpublished - to take readers on an exploration of the meanings, movements, personalities, and paradoxes of American art of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.