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Mary Heilmann’s painting Save the Last Dance for Me, made in 1979, presents three pink rectangles that dance in a seductive blackness suggestive of a 24-hour nightclub – or perhaps the three are actually one pink rectangle seen in a blissfully formal time lapse that simultaneously evokes the 1950s of her youth, the late-1970s landfall of New Wave style and the ‘last dance’ of painting that may never happen.
In this book, Terry R. Myers takes on the challenge of reading this outwardly simple painting. Pretty in pink, and tenaciously painted black, Save the Last Dance for Me brings Heilmann’s rigorous approach to painting and her attitude toward the personal expression of sorow and joy together to create an important and influential work, within painting and beyond.
