Tim Kane is an award-winning journalist covering numerous topics from business to the arts for over 30 years. In 2003, he began focusing on visual culture, writing reviews and features on artists primarily in Upstate New York, for various publications, including Art In America, Art News, SCULPTURE Magazine, Adirondack Life, Frieze, Albany Times Union, Houston, Santa Fe and Palm Springs magazines, while also teaching American Studies at Empire State College. Among other projects, he catalogued John Van Alstine’s work in 2014-15 and contributed one of the two main essays in John Van Alstine Sculpture 1971-2018.
In this handsomely designed and sumptuously illustrated
publication, author Tim Kane provides an illuminating overview of
John Van Alstine's art and the creative bloodline that flows
through his professional, intellectual, and personal development,
from his undergraduate student days through his early Washington,
DC-based career, to his prominent place among a generation of
modern sculptors both nationally and internationally. Kane probes
the relationship of Van Alstine's sculpture to nature with special
attention to his veneration of the distinctly north American
landscape and the esteemed nineteenth-century Hudson River School
of wilderness painting. American Vistas is a must-have volume for
all who admire Van Alstine's art.
— Howard N. Fox, Emeritus curator of contemporary art, Los Angeles
County Museum of Art
This beautiful volume — like the work it illuminates — makes a
distinctive contribution. John van Alstine's considerable gifts as
a sculptor are rooted in his love of the land, and of the materials
intrinsic to the American terroir. Tim Kane explains van Alstine's
work in the context of his sense of purpose, and his understanding
of what it means to be American. At last, we can see this major
sculptor in context, as heir to the legacy of painters such as
Homer, Luminists from Cole to Durand to Gifford, and American
Modernists such as Rockwell Kent. Should we not also consider van
Alstine in the context of Turrell, Goldsworthy and Lin?
— William R. Cross, Author of recent (2022) biography, Winslow
Homer: American Passage published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New
York. Chair of the advisory board of the Yale Center for Faith and
Culture
American Vistas: The Life and Art of John Van Alstine reveals just
that for one of America's great modernist and contemporary artists.
Tim Kane's singular contribution with this handsome companion
volume to The Artist Book Foundation's John Van Alstine: Sculpture
1971-2018 is his insightful interpretation of the biographical
details of the artist's life as architect and author of his
creative expressions. The landscapes of Van Alstine's life-the
Adirondacks, the West, Maine plus the dynamism of New York City-are
fundamental to the artist's vocabulary and vision. Mentors, family,
art and literature, and serendipity all play a role but Van Alstine
has always been the brains and the brawn in his creative process.
The resulting sculptures span five decades and stand testament to
this artist's exceptional and ongoing artistic journey as he
explores the themes of life in nature, stone and steel.
— Caroline M. Welsh, Art Historian and Director Emerita, Adirondack
Museum
The publication of the gorgeous new book on the art of John Van
Alstine, American Vista, is a perfect opportunity to review the
artist's career, one that now spans fifty years. A major figure in
American sculpture over that entire period, Van Alstine has
combined elements of metal and stone to create a large body of
works that are thrilling both in the splendid, rugged materials
that he uses and in their dynamic and elegant juxtaposition.
— Steven Naifeh, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of Jackson
Pollock: An American Saga and Van Gogh: The Life
American Vistas: The Life and Art of John Van Alstine tells the
story of a great American sculptor. Major museums across the United
States and internationally collect his work, which is abstract,
monumental, and elemental. As this book makes clear, his sculptures
are borne of the faded upstate industrial city where he grew up and
gritty North Country landscape where he has lived for decades. As
an artist, he is a master of the alchemy created by heat and
pressure and physics applied to stone and steel. This coffee table
book merges stunning images, penetrating prose, and a deep dive
into Van Alstine's artistic process across an impressive fifty-year
career. Van Alstine and author Tim Kane, an art critic and
journalist, are a perfect pairing. They prove true the adage,
“Every artist needs a writer, and every writer needs an
artist".
— Paul Grondahl, Opalka Endowed Director of the New York State
Writers Institute at the University at Albany, award-winning
journalist and author of several books
Independent curator, author/journalist and educator, Tim Cane,
provides us with a large, exquisite, beautifully illustrated
volume, on the prolific career of sculptor, John Van Alstine. Both,
live and work in the Adirondack region of upstate New York and Kane
illustrates – among other insights – the deep connections between
Van Alstine's artistic temperament and physical workspace, and the
Adirondack wilderness environment within our current art-historical
moment. More than a pictorial biography, it is a primer for a
substantive and beautiful life of artistic expression.
— David Reif, Prof. Emeritus, University of Wyoming, 2/10/2023
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