S1E106 - Alexander Nemerov

Our third of four Bill Lane Center for the American West podcasts featured Stanford's Alex Nemerov in conversation with Michael Krasny. The discussion began with what makes Western art distinctive and what captured Alex's imagination. Michael then explored Alex's approach to curating art exhibitions and discussed the influences of Alex's father, celebrated poet Howard Nemerov, and his aunt, iconic pioneer photographer Diane Arbus. This led to a discussion of Susan Sontag's book on photography and photography's status as fine art. The conversation then broadened to explore various themes: women artists, Jasper Johns, the universal and spiritual elements in art, solipsism, art for the marketplace versus art for art's sake, and socially purposeful versus aesthetic art. Alex shared both personal and professional perspectives on art's power—from its inward transformative and transfiguring effects to its broader meaning and potential as a world-changing agent. The interview concluded with a discussion of kindness, and Alex revealed what he considers the greatest work in American art.

Biography

Alexander Nemerov is the author of many books on American art, most recently The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s, praised by the novelist Annie Proulx as "one of the richest books ever to come my way—deeply beautiful, achingly painful and astonishingly tender"; and Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York, named by Vogue one of its best books of 2021 and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography. Nemerov is a professor of art history at Stanford University.

Conversation recorded on November 8, 2024.