A Big Yes and A Little No

An illustrated portrait of a fiercely independent artist whose career at the margins exposes the fault lines of postwar American art.

Robert Cenedella has always stood just outside the center of American art. Shaped by a formative mentorship with George Grosz, Cenedella built a career that resisted easy categorization—moving between painting, conceptual practice, muralism, and advertising while consistently challenging art-world orthodoxies.

A provocateur in the press and the gallery, he made headlines when his crucified Santa painting was removed from a Manhattan gallery, or when his conceptual project selling shares in a single painting resulted in a New York Times feature. A Big Yes and a Little No is the first comprehensive account of this career. Based on extensive interviews with the artist and featuring a foreword by Cenedella himself, the book brings together full-color reproductions, archival photographs, exhibition ephemera, and materials from Yes Art, his satirical art movement where he positioned himself as an anti-Warhol figure. From his Le Cirque mural to an Absolut Vodka campaign, Cenedella’s work critiques consumerism, art trends, and Atomic Age anxieties, all against the shifting political and social landscape of postwar America.

A Big Yes and a Little No offers a richly contextual portrait of an artist who worked across systems without ever fully belonging to them. Part biography, part visual archive, and part cultural history, it demonstrates how a career built at the margins can illuminate the center of American art.