Eye of the Sixties: Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Modern Art

New softcover, 378 pages, illustrated w/ black and white photos. “We all owe a debt to Judith E. Stein. Her biography of Richard Bellamy, Eye of the Sixties, retells the story many of us know and reminds us why we set out on our journey in the first place. The book is not academic, but a readable, worldly narrative of the art world by someone who knows and loves it.” ―Dave Hickey, author of Air Guitar “Richard Bellamy was one of a kind: a legendary art dealer who was contrary and self-effacing, with a keen eye for the artistically vital and unexpected. The artists he showed at his transformative Green Gallery define the canonical American art movements of the sixties. In Judith E. Stein’s meticulously researched and magnetically animated biography, we see this formative moment in American art through Bellamy’s eyes. Here, it looks boundless, like some unstable nomadic family in which great artists commingled in a wildly generative swarm.” ―Michael Brenson, author of Acts of Engagement “In this colorful, meticulously researched, and captivating volume, Judith E. Stein perfectly captures the circus that was the art world of the sixties, in which Richard Bellamy was an inadvertent but essential ringmaster. He was a poet dreamer, an iconoclastic hipster who was as short on business acumen as he was long on vision. Unburdened by art history, his legendary galleries were arenas of possibility; in silence, with intuition and innocence of eye, his guileless ability to identify authentic artists―from Di Suvero to Oldenburg and from Rosenquist to Judd―was uncanny, matched only by the strategies of the great Leo Castelli.” ―Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of American Art He wasn’t a bad tennis player, either.