Pat Steir: Paintings

This luxurious monograph examines Pat Steir’s innovative pouring technique and her resulting gestural, fluid paintings

Since the late 1980s, American artist Pat Steir (born 1938) has explored the vast formal and lyrical possibilities of her iconic visual idiom, experimenting with gravity’s aleatory effects on paint she pours and throws. This illustrated monograph focuses on the most recent eight years of her paintings, a particularly fruitful period that included large-scale installations at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. Designed with Steir’s direct oversight and close involvement, the book’s sequencing suggests the different visual and emotional resonances across her works. A new essay by Irish writer Colm Tóibín offers a poetic reading of Steir’s paintings, and a conversation between Steir and Hirshhorn curator Evelyn C. Hankins discusses the artist’s Color Wheel installation.