For the Artists: Critical Writing

For the Artists: Critical Writing, Volume 1 presents a collection of art reviews, critical essays and interviews with artists and chronicles an exhilarating time in the art world of 1980's Manhattan, when a burgeoning gallery scene in the East Village evolved to rival the more established gallery outposts on 57th Street. Greg Masters, writing for a number of publications, covered it all – both the well-known names and the upstarts. Younger painters, photographers, sculptors, film-makers and creative folks working in various media are all accounted for in this compilation. Complementing the text are 10 artist portraits by acclaimed photographer Barry Kornbluh, and a number of reproductions of artists' work, including two never-before-published drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat.

While For the Artists, Volume 1, issued earlier this year, focused on visual artists, this second volume gathers together a number of reviews and essays I've written for various publications and websites critiquing books and music. – essays and reviews examine Wordsworth's great neglected poem The Prelude to Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams to celebrations of bassist/composer Charlie Haden and rock group Animal Logic and a number of extended essays examine the so-called "electric period" of Miles Davis. More than a jazz musician, I attest repeatedly, Miles Davis' innovations – incorporating influences from outside the traditional jazz realm – exploded narrow confines and opened musical development to incorporate influences from every region and idea on the planet into an ever-evolving amalgam of aural delight and provocative emotional journeys.