Richard Artschwager! Whitney Museum of American Art Yale University Art Gallery Distributed by Yale University Press Jennifer R. Gross With contributions by Cathleen Chaffee | Ingrid Schaffner | Adam D. Weinberg New York New Haven New Haven and London

Richard Artschwager! vi Foreword adam d. weinberg

viii Acknowledgments

1 Absolutely Original jennifer r. gross

67 The Shifting Locations of Richard Artschwager cathleen chaffee

101 Richard Artschwager: Different Ways to Blow the Whistle Contents adam d. weinberg

149 Recollection (Artschwager) ingrid schaffner

188 Chronology

190 Exhibition History

214 Bibliography

229 Checklist of the Exhibition

234 Lenders to the Exhibition

236 Index Throughout this volume Richard Artschwager is variously described as “an outsider,” distinctive voices of individual artists who are as important for their differences as “an inveterate oddball,” “idiosyncratic,” and as using “design materials with a high they are for their connections to each other. And few are as distinctive in this period ick factor to create paintings and sculptures that have continued to strike just the as Richard Artschwager. right notes of offbeat realism and abstraction.” Indeed, since he arrived on the scene in the late 1950s Artschwager’s work has resisted stylistic definition. Even My most profound thanks are due to Richard and Ann Artschwager who have worked today, almost fifty years after his early exhibitions at Gallery in 1964 — closely with Jennifer Gross to create a distinctive survey, which embodies the artist’s where his work was presented with that of Christo, , Roy Lichtenstein, unique sensibility at critical moments in his career. Together they identified works and and Frank Stella — his art, having been extensively exhibited, collected, and written helped secure loans essential to the success of the exhibition. Jennifer, who travelled about in the and abroad, continues to fly in the face of prevailing modes the world to view nearly every major Artschwager object from which to make a selec- of art making. This is especially surprising given the “anything goes” permissiveness tion, is to be lauded for her perseverance, passion, and insight. Her love of all things of today’s art world. One only needs to look at Artschwager’s loopy, intensely colored Artschwager, including a deep understanding of the artist’s history and connection oil pastel In the Driver’s Seat (2008; p. 183) with its humorous, nonsensical subject to the art of his time has made for an exhibition that does more than simply relate of a distended, mannequin-like yellow figure seated in a blue hoop — that one may a story, but brings its originality to life. I am also grateful to Jock Reynolds, Henry J. assume is a steering wheel — levitating in a bright green, yellow, and blue landscape Heinz II Director of Yale University Art Gallery, whose commitment to Artschwager’s as proof of his singularity. As this drawing suggests, despite the wackiness of the accomplishments assured a successful collaboration between our two museums. world he presents, Artschwager is in control. Given the hallucinatory eccentricity of We are delighted to share this exhibition with the in Los Angeles, Foreword his output and materials, such as Formica, Celotex, and rubberized horse hair, one and I extend my warm thanks to Ann Philbin, Director, for sharing our enthusiasm might assume that Artschwager is a Surrealist on an excursion through dream worlds. for Artschwager’s work. However, his art, like his craftsmanship, is decidedly precise and strategic in its I am greatly indebted to those who share the Whitney’s commitment to explorations moving afield the territories of Pop, , Photo-Realism, and exhibitions of this scope and ambition. The unstinting support of Art appropriation. The artist navigates his way through and beyond prevailing styles, Foundation, Allison and Warren Kanders, Alice and Tom Tisch, and Mr. and Mrs. heightening our awareness of those styles and differentiating himself from them. Harrison Augur was essential to the realization of this retrospective. Without the By poking fun at them and himself, Artschwager reminds us that styles are con- generosity of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, it would have been structs created by the internal logic of each artist’s work and the shared characteris- impossible to produce this remarkable catalogue. This volume also benefited from tics among groups of artists. For example, Description of Table (1964; p. 111) and the kindness of other supporters, including Maura and Mark H. Resnick, Anna Marie Construction with Indentation (1966; p. 103), both with theatrical faux surfaces con- and Robert F. Shapiro, and a Yale University Art Gallery endowment created with a structed from Formica on plywood, not only mimic the forms of minimal objects challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Lenders always play a vital by artists like but also problematize the “truth to materials” edict and role in the success of retrospectives and Richard Artschwager! is no exception. More ridicule uselessness. than sixty lenders in the United States and abroad graciously agreed to share their Artschwager is a court jester taken seriously by his contemporaries even as works with viewers — a testament to the artist’s legacy and his importance today. his work critiques, derides, subverts, and extends their practices. All this to say that Artschwager is insistently himself as proposed by Richard Artschwager!, the title of Adam D. Weinberg the exhibition and this book. He is an artist who has deftly evaded being co-opted Alice Pratt Brown Director by the styles of others — a particularly remarkable achievement given the longevity of Whitney Museum of American Art his career and the prominence of his work. For decades the Whitney Museum of American Art has brought Artschwager into our fold having first exhibited his work in 1966 in Contemporary American Sculpture: Selection I and in the Annual Exhibition 1966: Contemporary Sculpture and Prints. That same year, the Whitney acquired its first Artschwager sculpture, Description of Table, thanks to our patrons Howard and Jean Lipman, who are largely responsible for building the Museum’s post–World War II sculpture collection. Today, the Whitney possesses the largest holdings of his art by any museum — a collection recently and significantly augmented by Emily Fisher Landau. In 1988, then Whitney curator Richard Armstrong curated the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s work, Richard Artschwager. Now, in association with Yale University Art Gallery, we are hon- ored to present a retrospective organized by Jennifer R. Gross, Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at that institution. While this exhibition confirms Artschwager’s place as a central figure in the history of twentieth-century American art, it also reminds us that the construct we call the history of art comprises

vi vii The evolution of Richard Artschwager’s remarkable oeuvre since his retrospective at Farris Wahbeh, Manager, Cataloguing and Documentation; Margie Weinstein, Manager the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988 attests to this artist’s unflagging of Education Initiatives; and Alexandra Wheeler, Deputy Director for Development. creativity and sustained prescience as an observer of contemporary culture. It has Beth Huseman, Interim Head of Publications at the Whitney, made the been a rewarding privilege to work with Richard and his wife, Ann, and to under- creation of this book a pleasure. She was ably assisted in the endeavor by Brian take an in-depth study of more than five decades of his work in preparation for the Reese, Publications Assistant. Sue Medlicott and Nerissa Dominguez Vales enabled exhibition and this catalogue. an innovative yet beautifully apt book. The skilled work of photographers Ben It is a tribute to the Whitney’s longstanding commitment to individual artists Blackwell, Jason Mandella, Chris Gardner, and Tim Thayer has allowed many wonder- that it will be the first venue for this retrospective, a natural extension of a long his- ful Artschwager works to find their proper place in the history of his oeuvre. David tory of presenting Artschwager’s work since 1966. As this exhibition came together, Frankel wove the catalogue texts into a compelling collection of different approaches the Yale University Art Gallery was in the midst of a significant renovation and expan- to Artschwager’s work; David’s challenging questions always encourage better sion. The Whitney stepped in to lead the organization, tour, and publication, facilitat- scholarship. Daphne Geismar turned the exhibition catalogue into an object of desire ing a unique partnership. that honors the practice of the artist it presents. Her work sets the standard for the My foremost gratitude is extended to Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s design of art books today. Alice Pratt Brown Director, for his passionate and unflagging support of this project The colleagues whom Jock Reynolds and I work with to realize ambitious from its inception. His zeal for Artschwager’s work is inspirational and has been projects at the Yale University Art Gallery are Pamela Franks, Deputy Director for formative to my research and reflections on the form the exhibition should take. I am Collections and Education; Jill Westgard, Deputy Director for Museum Resources and Acknowledgments deeply appreciative of his encouragement and mentorship as well as the scholarship Stewardship; Jessica Labbe, Deputy Director for Finance and Administration; and he contributed to this volume. Laurence Kanter, Chief Curator and Lionel Goldfrank III Curator of European Art. Jock Reynolds, Yale University Art Gallery’s Henry J. Heinz II Director, supported They have each lent a guiding hand to this enterprise. Susan Matheson, Molly and the collaboration with the Whitney as well as my research in the midst of the Yale Walter Bareiss Curator of Ancient Art, who was the Art Gallery’s Chief Curator University Art Gallery’s ambitious expansion, signaling his unwavering commitment to when the exhibition was first developed, provided steadfast encouragement. Brian the vital role of contemporary art in our culture. His enthusiastic admiration for McGovern, Assistant Director for Museum Resources and Stewardship, assisted Artschwager’s work laid the foundation for similar reactions from countless artists, with funding support. John ffrench, Director of Visual Resources, and his depart- collectors, and institutional colleagues as we moved forward with the project. ment’s staff were instrumental in providing photographic assistance for the cata- The ownership of art is a form of cultural stewardship, and the exhibition logue. Tiffany Sprague, Director of Publications and Editorial Services; Lynne Addison, would not have been possible without the generous commitment of its lenders. I am Registrar; and Amy Dowe, Senior Associate Registrar, shared sound advice and extremely grateful for the private collectors and public institutions that have been experience during the planning of the catalogue and exhibition tour. Their assis- willing to share their works with the general public. tance is deeply appreciated. My work as an outside curator was greatly facilitated by the Whitney’s Numerous undergraduate and graduate students have helped us with extremely professional and hardworking staff. Chief Curator and Deputy Director their excellent research and writing on the works included in the exhibition. Bahij for Programs Donna De Salvo embraced this enterprise wholeheartedly and lent her Chancey, Megan Conroy, Helen Goldenberg, Nicholle Lamartina, Elisabeth Thomas, sage experience working within the Whitney’s – designed building. Lara Weibgen, and Sophia Somin Yoo all made vital contributions to the realization Christy Putnam, Associate Director for Exhibitions and Collections Management, jug- of the exhibition and catalogue. Their passion for knowledge was a source of per- gled the scheduling and execution of the tour with calming cheer and nimble institu- petual encouragement as we sought to bring Artschwager’s work to a new genera- tional navigation. Lauren DiLoreto, Exhibitions Coordinator, and Kate Hahm, Assistant tion of admirers. Exhibitions Coordinator, more than ably attended to every detail of the exhibition I would particularly like to thank Cathleen Chaffee, Horace W. Goldsmith and tour. Mark Steigelman, Design/Construction Manager, guided the exhibition into Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Amy Canonico, Museum form. I am grateful for the able assistance of Justin Romeo and Jennifer Leventhal of Assistant for Modern and Contemporary Art, for their tireless efforts that brought the Director’s Office for their deft skill and humor. My gratitude is also due to the fol- this project to fruition. They made a complex journey truly enjoyable, and their lowing group of people for their able and generous assistance: Caitlin Bermingham, thoughtful scholarship and fresh insights into Artschwager’s work, along with their Assistant Head Preparator; Anita Duquette, Manager, Rights and Reproductions; Rich attention to detail, have been instrumental in forming the structure the exhibition Flood, Marketing and Community Affairs Officer; Seth Fogelman, Senior Registrar; and catalogue have taken. Meg Forsyth, Graphic Designer; Molly Gross, Senior Publicist; Kiowa Hammons, Rights At the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Ann Philbin, Director; Anne Ellegood, and Reproduction Assistant; Matthew Heffernan, Assistant Registrar; Nick Holmes, Senior Curator; Brooke Hodge, Director of Exhibition Management and Publications, General Counsel; Jeffrey Levine, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer; Carol and their colleagues enthusiastically came on board for the exhibition. Portland Mancusi-Ungaro, Associate Director for Conservation and Research; Kathryn Potts, McCormick, Director, Registration and Collections Management at the Hammer, capa- Associate Director, Helena Rubinstein Chair of Education; Matthew Skopek, Assistant bly handled the receipt and care of works in Los Angeles. The Hammer Museum Conservator; Stephen Soba, Communications Officer; Carrie Springer, Senior Curatorial shares Yale’s vision for bringing contemporary exhibition programming to the students Assistant; John Stanley, Chief Operating Officer; Emilie Sullivan, Associate Registrar; and artists in their community, and it is always a pleasure to work with them.

viii ix Special thanks are due to Bob Monk, Director of , who has I am deeply grateful for her assistance and profoundly respect her devotion to Richard been generous with his assistance and genuine passion for this exhibition. He has and his work. been a knowledgeable resource, and he and his staff have been most helpful in locat- Richard Artschwager continues to make great things happen for those of us ing and navigating the loans for the tour. with our eyes on his art. The privilege of studying his process in the preparation of I would like to thank all those who assisted the research for the exhibition this exhibition has left me in awe of his singular vision and discipline in pursuing it by sharing their knowledge and enabling access to artwork and archives: Naomi Abe with unrelenting focus. My journey has left me dazzled by the beauty of his work and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; L. Clifford Ackley at the Museum challenged by his somber reflection on, and observation of, the human experience. of Fine Arts, ; Brooke Alexander and Owen Houhoulis, Brooke Alexander Yet the greater knowledge I have gained of his work ultimately leaves me as mystified Gallery; Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and and intrigued as when I first encountered it more than twenty-five years ago. I look Foundation; Wendy Hurlock Baker at the ; Michael Baunach; forward to looking at it more, and thinking about it even harder, as much as I antici- Cindy Buckner at the Grand Rapids Art Museum; Andrew L. Camden; Barbara Castelli; pate seeing what he is going to make next. Eileen Cohen; Katrien Damman; Gabriella De Ferrari; Leah Dickerman and Jen Schauer at the , New York; Dr. Stephan Diederich and Kathrin Kessler Jennifer R. Gross of the , Cologne; Jessica Duffett at Leo Castelli Gallery; Carol Eliel Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Curator of and Tiffany Daneshgar at Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Peter Freeman, Laura Modern and Contemporary Art Front, Vicki Gambill at the Broad Foundation; Gary Garrels and John Zarobell at the Yale University Art Gallery San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Pia Gottschaller; Rebecca Hart at the Detroit Institute of Arts; Rhona Hoffman; Linda Janger; Frances Katz; David Kiehl, Curator and Curator of Prints, Whitney Museum of American Art; Catherine Kord; Laura Malone; Donald B. Marron; Sarah Miller; Marsha Miro; Bernhard Moser; Jillian Murphy, Gagosian Gallery; Heidi Naef at the Schaulager; Albert Oehlen; Mary-Ellen Powell at the Weisman Foundation; Sabine Roeder at the Krefeld Museum; Pamela Sanders; Jan Schall and Lissa Cramer at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Dieter Schwarz, Director, Kunstmuseum Winterthur; Michael Semff at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich; Rebecca Tilghman and Ian Alteveer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Ron Warren, Mary Boone Gallery; Daniel Weinberg; Barbara Weiss; Queenie Wong of Sonnabend Gallery; Donald Young; and Del Zogg, formerly of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Jed Bark, Bark Frameworks; and James Barth, Handmade Frames, Inc. At David Nolan Gallery, Katherine Chan and Susannah Palmer responded to an endless tide of factual inquiries and their cheerful assistance is always appreciated. Particular thanks are due to Silke Sommer, whose invaluable labor in assembling a catalogue raisonné of Artschwager’s work based on archives organized by Ingrid Schaffner was essential to the expedient realization of the catalogue and exhibition. I first came to know of Richard Artschwager’s work in the 1980s when I worked downstairs and across the street from Leo Castelli and Mary Boone where he exhibited his work and through Ingrid Schaffner, then a freelance art writer who has become a much admired curatorial colleague and friend. At that time, she was also Artschwager’s office assistant and would speak of his work with great esteem. These conversations planted the seed for my own curiosity about his art, and I am tremendously grateful to Ingrid for this introduction. David Nolan nurtured that seed with his own enthusiasm and exhibitions of Artschwager’s drawings through the succeeding decades. His efforts led me to look more closely at Artschwager’s oeuvre and I realized that it was time for a scholarly reexamination of it within the context of a retrospective. Thank you, Miss Schaffner and Mr. Nolan. Ann Artschwager has been a tireless supporter of her husband’s work and life, and now of this project. She opened her home, archives, and store of memories to us and patiently answered countless questions. In addition, she provided everything from photographic documentation to delicious, sustaining meals while we worked.

x acknowledgments xi jennifer r. gross

Absolutely Original

To find our way toward seeing the world from the perspective of Richard Artschwager, we might start by making an imaginative journey away from his work and toward the places from which this enigmatic artist first learned to look at things. Such an ex cur- sion would help us to remember that the playing field of culture is grounded not only in the landscape of galleries and museums but also in a visual context much more commonplace and out in plain sight —that everything of interest is, as Artschwager has said, “all right there.”1 This exercise is a rather simple endeavor, not metaphysical but rooted in physical knowledge — knowledge of the mesas outside Las Cruces, New Mexico, where the artist grew up. Looking out toward the unbounded horizon in that topog- raphy, we are conscious that each of us is but a small mark or molecule in the uni- verse. This expansive framework, and its shifts in scale determined by context and perspective, left a permanent impression on Artschwager, establishing his sense of how his art lives in the world. As he sees it, both art and life, like cacti that shimmer in and out of focus on the desert horizon, exist through our visual affirmation. This maximal view of the world is counterbalanced by the disciplined training in close looking administered by both of Artschwager’s parents. His mother, Eugenia, a painter, taught him to draw and to “focus on the edges.”2 His father, Ernst, was a sci- entist who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the anatomy of the potato,3 studying the microscopic mutation of material as fact. He was also an amateur photographer. Artschwager, by his own account, grew up focused on the structural underpinnings of all organic and inorganic phenomena. He learned at an early age to know and value his world one image after another, from snapshot to camera pan, a habit he has come to believe is integral to his capacity to recognize art when he sees it:

I was taught to look under stones, in dusty corners, at what is directly in front of me —that’s the hard part. What is art? Coming from my background, je- ne- sais-quoi is not very much evidence. . . . I’m lost to meta physics . . . I don’t know much about art but I’ll know an art if I see one. I’m thinking like Archie Bunker here. . . . So I try . . . casting a wide net, salvaging any object, image or event that captures my attention.4

Artschwager’s voracious commitment to looking as a means of valuing the world is what has motivated his practice as an artist for over half a century. His sculptures,

1 That first entirely blp- filled show took place at Konrad Fischer’s Düsseldorf gallery, a former open- air passageway that only the year before had been fitted with glass doors and turned into an exhibition space (fig. 72). It nonetheless was already seen as one of the most cutting- edge galleries in Germany. Here Artschwager sited a swarm of blps to emphasize the gallery’s odd arched shape and its continuity with the out- side world. Throughout the late 1960s and early ’70s, he continued to place blps to focus awareness on the work of others in group exhibitions, on architecture, to alter the plane of viewing, and to set things in motion, challenging viewers to figure out, as he put it, “which is the ornament and which is the thing ornamented” (fig. 71).8 The blps and their photo- documentation transformed everything from art spaces and city streets to interstitial rural environments into the foci of a kind of aesthetic attention that was simultaneously pictorial (photogenic), sculptural, and transient. The hetero- geneity of the settings created by what Artschwager called his “essay into high graffiti” lay at the core of their appeal to an art world increasingly attuned to ideational prac- tices, and to the movement of the art object from conventional museum and gallery presentations into the environment, alternative spaces, and the pages of publications (fig. 73).9 During this period, Artschwager appeared keyed into movements with which he otherwise had little kinship: environmental and .10 In 1968, for his second invitation to participate in a Whitney Annual, Artschwager installed a hundred blps made from various materials (wood, horsehair, paint) around the museum, in a work entitled 100 Locations (fig. 75). That same year,

70. Blp at the University of California, Davis, 1968 for Harald Szeemann’s iconic exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become

68. Table with Pink Tablecloth, 1964 Formica on wood 25 ½ × 44 × 44 in. (64.8 × 111.8 × 111.8 cm)

69. “Strange Primary Structures: Obvious Forms, Boxes and Presences will be the Shape of Art for Some Time to Come,” Life magazine, July 28, 1967. Review of Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors at the Jewish Museum, New York, 1966

68 chaffee: the shifting locations of richard artschwager 69 paintings, and drawings are evidence of his expedition into the unpredictable waters 2. Untitled, 1962 Acrylic on canvas of aesthetics, applying the skills he learned as a biology student at .5 45 ½ × 61 in. (115.6 × 154.9 cm) The result is an oeuvre that is confrontational and confounding, whimsical and exqui- site. It started in the late 1950s with paintings of the New Mexico landscape and has come full circle in recent drawings that embrace the same panoramic horizons. This time, however, as Artschwager has reached the age of eighty- eight, his purview is a window not onto the world but beyond it. His art is now illuminated with color and firmly sourced in his imagination, and in the pleasure of exercising the innate capacities as a maker that he has honed over a lifetime. He has fulfilled his stated artistic ambition in life, “to be original.”6 Besides Artschwager’s unrelenting capacity to surprise us, what stands out about his career as we look at it retrospectively is that he has maintained his unique position as an outsider, prophetically anticipating how his culture would see things a few years or decades in the future. His grisaille paintings on Celotex, while their sources in media imagery once made them seem detached, today appear hauntingly nostalgic and beautiful. The hard- edged forms of his sculptures from the 1960s, with their wood-grain - evoking Formica surfaces indexing photography, presaged twenty- first- century eyes all stoked up on technology and fast looking. When they first appeared, they were often perceived as obdurate and unfamiliar; today they seem to assert a genuine human pathos, coming into focus just on the near side of the shimmering disconnect between our lives in real time and our visual, emotional, and intellectual investment in the unrelenting tide of images delivered to us by the Internet, images that have become, for many of us, our primary connection to the world. Addressing this slippage between what is real and physical and our expecta- tion, determined by media culture, of something more real is what Artschwager, in his 1990 essay “Art and Reason,”7 described as the disengagement between our

1. Bushes III, 1972 Acrylic on Celotex, with metal frame 44 ½ × 54 in. (113 × 137 cm)

2 gross: absolutely original 3 social and our physical experience of space, and has been at the heart of all his artis- Artschwager’s presence in the art world blurred all the set categories. His tic endeavors. pictures and objects sobered up Pop, lightened up Minimalism, and made Conceptual If you ask Artschwager about his work, he will time and again refer you art something other than just a thinking man’s game. How could someone remain to “Art and Reason.” The essay shows that this seeming outsider practitioner has so methodically committed to the formal values of sculpture and painting during been working into the box of art history all along — if from the outside, the real three decades when they were considered déclassé, yet also keep his insouciant finger world. In a 2002 interview, when asked whether he felt vision in our culture had so firmly on the pulse of an art culture that was being thoroughly upended by media funda mentally changed, he replied with a reference to this essay: culture? He has maintained this in- advance and slightly out- of- sync position in the art world ever since. Yes, but I’m not talking about the apparatus, I’m talking about our being Artschwager’s paintings and sculptures were motivated by questions raised in a primarily social, as opposed to primarily physical, space. Our physical in his own head both about art and about living in the present, about the moments space has been eroded to the point of being endangered, it survives where and values reflected in the newspaper he read at the kitchen table each morning. there are few people and lots of space and where a person or persons can In time, his work would come to examine that kitchen table, the chair he sat on, and reside in pleasurable solipsism — watching, listening, not editing or throwing the plate off of which he ate. For Artschwager, this subjective axis was where art anything away. . . . Social space is language-bound and language is always just might appear, its issues addressed by what he could make with his own hands subject- predicate, a Procrustean abridgment of the Event which, for instance, and reckon with his own eyes. As for the viewer’s engagement with this process, allows no excluded middle. . . . Just think back to that time when people Artschwager made clear in his studio notebook that he was not indifferent to the lived in the country. One didn’t look at red and green lights — in other words, broader impact of his observations: “The art is what happens to the spectator by prior particles — in order to cross the street but rather at the full field of vision. arrangement of the artist.”12 If you follow his thinking from work to work over the And so it is with Matisse. When you sweep your eyes over it, you’re seeing years, it is uncanny how many times, and on how many levels, his decisions touched it as it was intended to be seen. It’s so simple.8 the broader art dialogue while the journey remained clearly his own. The career trajectory of this late bloomer is well rehearsed in the literature.9 An anecdote Artschwager tells about how, at the age of forty, with a young Art schwager’s life reads like a great American novel, a John Steinbeck epic from the family to support, he found the license to commit his life to making what he calls first half of the twentieth century, in which, however, the “aw shucks” protagonist “useless objects”13 could come from a playbook coauthored by Timothy Leary and rides off over the horizon of the twenty- first looking less like an everyman and more Marshall McLuhan: he was inspired by watching a children’s cartoon show on tele- like an enigmatic, sharp- eyed character invented by Cormac McCarthy. Around the vision, a chance encounter that determined his life’s work. age of forty, almost twenty years after he served in World War II and was wounded There was a television program that gave me whispered instructions. It was in the Battle of the Bulge, Artschwager had an epiphany that making good objects, a children’s morning program of animated cartoons, moderated by a police- functional furniture —the craftsman’s profession by which he had kept his family man. He told about his son who would spend his time in the garden, nailing fed and his mind and hands ably occupied — was not the same as making good in his boards together. Any kind of boards, just nailed together. Because of this head. Since the production of useful furniture had become a boring reality, he began inscrutable anti- social behavior the father, in anger and in sorrow, decided to push the envelope of taste and tradition as he knew it. Speaking of his motivations not to send his son to summer camp. Well, it happens I had a lot of scrap in the studio while making this transition, Artschwager has stated, “I had learned of ¼- inch plywood. What came out was a nailed stack of plywood about that by then —things that are unthinkable, check ’em out. That’s the chief way for the size of a human figure, weighing about 400 pounds, hung from the finding originality if originality is the target.”10 ceiling by a chain. This was one of the private works whose making filled In 1960, Artschwager sent off a few letters and slides to a handful of art up my spare time.14 dealers who hung a shingle in New York at the time. Unconnected and middle- aged, he achieved a success that would be the dream of every young artist when , That nailed stack of plywood was Portrait Zero (fig. 3), made around 1961 and still who was working for Leo Castelli, immediately wrote back proposing to include him standing as one of Artschwager’s most concisely brilliant reductions of his lifelong in a group exhibition. The ingenue artisan- turned- artist became an international sen- formal painterly and sculptural concerns. This is a sculptural image of painting, a com- sation in less than three easy steps. Artschwager would stay with Castelli for the posite of image surrogates that occupy the realm of neither painting nor sculpture next twenty- five years. but hang in midair like an aesthetic piñata begging the recognition and misapprehen- What is compelling about this chronology to an art historian is not its reality sion of Clement Greenberg. This is Artschwager’s first work to introduce the picture as a career fantasy but the fact that it threw Artschwager, the mature craftsman, plane into the physical space occupied by sculpture. It is supreme, as in Suprematist, into a hothouse of young scene- makers such as Lee Bontecou, , Roy as in wouldn’t Vladimir Tatlin, El Lissitzky, and be envious of its Lichtenstein, Marisol, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol, and economy and direct assertion of an ideal of an art constructed of common means? this in the formative years of the contemporary art market. These were legendary years But if we heed Artschwager’s narrative, it is art completely inspired by television as a at the Castelli Gallery, and Artschwager bubbled along, making and exhibiting source of fictional truths. The voice in his living room became the id in his head, a idiosyncratic work that seemed to adapt like a chameleon to every current art dia- rousing alternative to the voices of art world harpies such as curators, critics, art his- logue without ever submitting to any particular school of thought.11 torians, or even other artists. The medium that in the 1960s would change America

4 gross: absolutely original 5 4. Road to Damascus, 1960 Charcoal on paper 19 × 25 in. (48.3 × 63.5 cm)

he were under interrogation. Even more startling than the positioning of this figure is the fact that the artist has erased his eyes out of their sockets and off the page. The erasures read both as voids and as signs of force, as though his eyes had been blown away. The work’s title evokes the biblical story of the alpha apostle Paul, confronted by a vision of Christ on his way to Damascus. This persecutor of Chris- tians was temporarily blinded by the encounter and experienced a complete change in his perspective on the world and in his sense of his life’s calling. While remaining a religious zealot, Paul became a follower of Christ rather than his foremost denouncer. It is intriguing that Artschwager, who is not religious, should have attached a narrative of radical spiritual conversion to this early work. He appears to be refer- ring to his own epiphany, the moment in which he became blind to the finely crafted furniture he was making and the truer vision it led him to in his work. Artschwager had come to the realization that art lay as much in the seeing as in the making —that it lay in one’s perspective on things, not just in craft. While he would continue to be an object-maker whose attention to detail was “fanatical,”15 he was determined that his future efforts would be applied to things to be looked at, to what he identified as the “useless” realm of art. The image in Road to Damascus of a solitary, limbless figure pinned down by a boundless horizon also exemplifies the intimidatingly honest and empathetic tenor that would underlie Artschwager’s artistic practice from that moment on. While scientific in his formal inquiries, Artschwager has never given up a primarily by exposing covert social and political agendas had confirmed Artschwager’s thoughts 3. Portrait Zero, 1961 humanistic approach to making art. Although he has fiercely fought to keep out Wood, screws, and rope about subject matter, form, and the importance of making art as a mode of cultural inflections of the personal “I” — shunned in the wake of , 45 ¼ × 26 ¼ × 5 ½ in. (114.9 × 68.7 × 14 cm) claim- staking, as though he were on special assignment for Mr. Rogers. which was thought to have overdone them — his work has always been excruciatingly 5. Jasper Johns (b. 1930) Road to Damascus (1960; fig. 4), made around the same time as Portrait Zero, No, 1961 human, an accounting of the sobering isolation inherent in the individual’s con- is one of Artschwager’s first mature drawings. It presents a man who appears to be Encaustic, collage, and frontation with the world. Like the stoic work No (1961; fig. 5) by his peer Jasper Johns, Sculp-metal on canvas, with objects to whom he has admitted a debt,16 Artschwager’s art harbors the universal vulner- seated with his arms under a table so broad that it fills the sheet of paper end to end, 68 × 40 in. (172.7 × 101.6 cm) its edge reading as a horizon. Pinioned behind the table, the man looks as though Collection of the artist abilities and banal realities of the human journey.

6 gross: absolutely original 7 13. Triptych, 1962 Acrylic on wood and Formica 38 × 54 × 2 ¼ in. (96.5 × 137.2 × 5.7 cm)

12. Portrait II, 1963 Formica on wood 68 × 26 × 13 in. (172.8 × 66 × 33 cm)

12 gross: absolutely original 13 14. Counter II, 1965 15. Swivel, 1964 Formica on wood, with metal turnstile Formica on wood 71 ¼ × 36 × 21 in. (181 × 91.4 × 53.3 cm) 40 ½ × 26 × 14 3⁄8 in. (102.6 × 66.4 × 36.5 cm)

14 gross: absolutely original 15 21. Destruction III, 1972 22. Destruction IV, 1972 Acrylic on Celotex, with metal frames Acrylic on Celotex, with metal frame 74 × 88 in. (188 × 223.5 cm) overall 40 × 48 in. (101.6 × 121.9 cm)

22 gross: absolutely original 23 The forced calm of such observations was interrupted by Artschwager’s crea- tion of a series of objects that updated his early work Portrait Zero, and its mul- tiple picture planes, with a consideration of the invisible influence of time on matter. Journal II (1991; fig. 30) is a relief that hinges in the corner of a room, spreading out on both adjoining walls. Its left side is a sweep of rays, painted with a wood- grain pattern in grisaille, that rush into the room’s corner, where they appear to hit with force. There they transform into an assembly of planks, constructed not of wood but of Formica and rendered in color, that splays out on the wall to the right. A literal image of creation as a burst of moving atoms coming into form as matter, or alter- nately, read right to left, of matter transmuting into energy, the work draws our attention to the fact that the matter we see is only one of its moments in time, only a temporary arrangement of its molecules. The means by which Artschwager chose to engage this imposing concept, usually relegated to the stewardship of physicists and philosophers, is the highly accessible tool of comic innocence. In manifesting the aural resonance of comic book onomatopoeia, with its pows, blams, and splats, the work has a witty, exaggerated literalness, even while it physically embodies the abrupt disconnect between our intellectual and our physical experience of the world. Journal II inspired a number of shattering, splattering table and chair reliefs, such as Splatter Chair I (1992; see fig. 118), which punctuated Artschwager’s instal- lations of this period with visual force. Along with these dramatic pieces, and in keep- ing with the oversize expectations of the 1980s art market, works such as Organ of Cause and Effect III (1986; see fig. 128) and Door II (1992; see fig. 130) took on a theat- rical scale. If in the 1960s Artschwager’s work had been perceived as kitsch, taste- less, even vulgar, in the 1980s the consumer aspirations of the art world seemed to have caught up with him. His exhibitions with his dealer of these years, Mary Boone, had the aura of stage sets, and the sense of intimate reflection in his work of the previous decade was replaced by a sharp irony. In The Cave (If you lived here, you’d be home now) (1992; fig. 31) and other pieces Artschwager returned to the subject of the glamorous interior, now seen within frames and through mullions stylized with an exaggerated grisaille finish. He also continued to paint domestic interiors, but now they were animated by molten decorative patterning and infusions of color from pieces of Formica inset into the Celotex surface. Works such as Sitting and Not (1992; fig. 32) and Taj Mahal II (1997; see fig. 140) explore how imagination helps to bridge the gap between what we know and what we see. The mullions reinforce the viewer’s exclusion from images that emulate the luxury domestic settings familiar in advertising and travel and home- design publications. In 1981, in the Hayden Gallery at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Artschwager created his first large- scale interactive sculptural installation, Janus III (Elevator) (see fig. 34), a chrome-and - Formica elevator cab with its own interior lighting. Visitors could enter, press buttons for up or down, and hear an audio track of rushing sound, like that of a moving elevator. He created variations on this work over the next few years, exhibiting them at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1988 and at the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, which acquired the piece in 2002. In the 1980s and ’90s, Artschwager took his furniture-inspired sculpture out of the museum and gallery context and into the world through a series of outdoor 30. Journal II, 1991 commissions, mediating human scale in built public environments. These austere, func- Formica and acrylic on wood tional seating groups, made primarily in granite, were often complemented by live Two panels: 56 × 172 in. (142.2 × 436.9 cm) left; 80 × 51 in. (203.2 × 129.5 cm) right trees and natural settings, which counterbalanced their somber presence with living

30 gross: absolutely original 31 41. Bowl of Peaches on Glass Table, 1973 43. Exclamation Point (Chartreuse), 2008 Acrylic on Celotex, with metal frame Plastic bristles on a mahogany 19 ½ × 25 in. (49.5 × 63.5 cm) core painted with latex 65 × 22 × 22 in. (165.1 × 55.9 × 55.9 cm)

42. Rights of Man, 1991 Acrylic on Celotex, with painted wood frame 47 ¾ × 62 in. (121.2 × 157.5 cm)

40 gross: absolutely original 41 128. Organ of Cause and Effect III, 1986 Formica and latex paint on plywood 129 × 61 ¾ × 18 in. (327.7 × 156.9 × 45.7 cm)

129. Table Prepared in the Presence of Enemies, 1993 Wood, Formica, and aluminum 59 × 60 × 75 in. (149.9 × 152.4 × 190.5 cm)

122 weinberg: richard artschwager 123 1923 1978 Born on December 26 in Washington, D.C. His father is a botanist, and his mother is a painter Spends six months in Hamburg as part of a residency program sponsored by the city council

1931 1983 Spends the winter in Munich with his sister and their mother, who is attending art classes at the First exhibition at Mary Boone Gallery in New York. Begins work on Sitting / Stance, a public Akademie der Bildenden Künste commission for the Battery Park City residential and commercial complex in Lower Manhattan

1935 1988 – 89 Family moves to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where Artschwager lives until going to college. Retrospective at the Whitney Museum; exhibition travels to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Begins spending time at his father’s laboratory at the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Palacio de Velázquez in Madrid, the Mechanic Arts and taking trips with his mother to the desert to draw Centre Georges Pompidou in , and the Städtische Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf

1941 – 43 1990 Studies biology, chemistry, and mathematics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York Designs the stage set for a production of Orson Welles’s adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles 1944 Poster for Introducing Artschwager, Drafted into the U.S. Army and suspends his studies. During his tour of duty in Europe, he is Christo, Hay, Watts, Leo Castelli Gallery, 1990 – 91 wounded in the Battle of the Bulge and reassigned to an administrative position in . New York, 1964 Realizes the outdoor sculpture Generations for the Elvehjem Museum of Art at the University of Later works in counterintelligence in Wisconsin in Madison. Creates the first works in the series “Splatter Pieces”

1947 – 50 1992 Returns to the United States and completes his BA at Cornell. Relocates to New York, Makes first works in the series “Crates” where he studies with French painter Amédée Ozenfant and works as a door-to-door baby Chronology 1993 photographer Receives Skowhegan Award 1950 – 53 1995 Works as a bank clerk and a cabinetmaker, among other occupations. Opens a joinery workshop Receives Carnegie International Prize with his brother-in-law and begins making simple, well-crafted furniture 2002 1953 – 57 Designs facade for the gallery Georg Kargl BOX in Vienna, inspired by Adolf Loos’s 1908 designs Expands furniture-making activities and hires several workshop assistants. Attends life-drawing for Vienna’s American Bar classes at night 2008 1959 Designs, in collaboration with StudioMDA, a facade for the David Nolan Gallery in New York Exhibits landscape paintings at Art Directions Gallery in New York

1960 – 61 Begins making sculptures out of wood and Formica and paintings based on found photographs

1964 Work is introduced at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, as part of a group exhibition with Richard Artschwager, c. 1945 Christo, Alex Hay, and Robert Watts. Later that year, participates in a group exhibition with Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol

1965 First one-person exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery

1966 Kynaston McShine includes Artschwager’s work in Primary Structures, the first major exhibition of Minimal art, at the Jewish Museum in New York

1967 Develops “blps” while a visiting professor at the University of California, Davis. Uses rubberized hair in sculptures for the first time

1968 First one-person exhibition in Europe, at Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf

1970 Closes commercial furniture workshop

1973 First one-person museum exhibition, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago

1974 Participates in American , at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Begins Installation view of one-person exhibition at Facade of Georg Kargl BOX, Vienna, designed by Facade of David Nolan Gallery, New York, work on the “Door Window Table Basket Mirror Rug” series of paintings and drawings, which he Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, 1968 Artschwager, 2002 designed by Richard Artschwager and StudioMDA, (overleaf) Artschwager, 1966 continues for the next three decades New York, 2008

188 189 1965 1982 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan, Richard Artschwager: New Work

1967 1983 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles Mary Boone Gallery, New York 1968 Swen Parson Gallery, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, Germany 1984 1969 Matrix Gallery, University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, Richard Artschwager / Galerie Ricke, Cologne MATRIX 71. Traveled to , Hartford, Connecticut, as Richard Artschwager / 1970 MATRIX 82 Eugenia Butler Gallery, Los Angeles 1985 Lo Guidice Gallery, Chicago, New Paintings by Richard Artschwager Chantal Crousel et Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris Onnasch Galerie, Berlin Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles Face, 1970 1972 Charcoal on paper Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland. Traveled to Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Galerie Ricke, Cologne, Richard Artschwager: Neue Bilder 25 ¼ × 19 in. (64.1 × 48.3 cm) The Netherlands; CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France (catalogue) Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Richard Artschwager: Paintings Leo Castelli Gallery, New York

1973 1986 Dunkelman Gallery, Toronto, Richard Artschwager: Paintings Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, Richard Artschwager: Recent Paintings Exhibition History Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Recent Paintings Donald Young Gallery, Chicago One-person Exhibitions Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (catalogue) * Mary Boone Gallery / Michael Werner Gallery, New York, Richard Artschwager: Sculpture, 1974 1962 –1968 (catalogue) Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, Artschwager: Recent Paintings Van Buren / Brazelton / Cutting Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Richard Artschwager: Drawings Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Geneva 1987 1975 Doris C. Freeman Plaza, New York, Richard Artschwager: Counter III Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, Richard Artschwager: Drawings Galerie Georges Lavrov, Paris, Richard Artschwager: Dessins, Peintures et Sculptures 1965 – 87 Galerie Neuendorf, Hamburg, Germany Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria Jared Sable Gallery, Toronto Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Artschwager: Door Window Table Basket Mirror Rug (catalogue)

1976 Castelli Graphics, New York Walter Kelly Gallery, Chicago, Ten Years of the Black Spot

1977 Sable-Castelli Gallery, Toronto

1978 Castelli Graphics, New York, Richard Artschwager: Drawings The Clocktower, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, New York Kunstverein Hamburg, Germany, Zu Gast in Hamburg: Richard Artschwager. Traveled to Neue Galerie – Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen, Germany (catalogue) Morgan Gallery, Shawnee Mission, Kansas, Richard Artschwager: Paintings and Drawings Texas Gallery, Houston

1979 Brush, 1968 Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Richard Artschwager’s Theme(s). Traveled to Wood and brush bristles, 5 × 10 × 5 in. (12.7 × 25.4 × 12.7 cm) Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, California; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (catalogue) Asher / Faure Gallery, Los Angeles Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Richard Artschwager: A Survey of Sculpture and Paintings from the ’60s and ’70s

1980 Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Sculpture by Richard Artschwager

1981 Artschwager at work in his studio Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Poster for Zu Gast in Hamburg: during his residency in Hamburg, Note to the reader: An asterisk denotes Van Buren / Brazelton / Cutting Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts Richard Artschwager, Kunstverein Hamburg, Germany, 1978 a modest exhibition catalogue. Young / Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, Richard Artschwager: Paintings and Objects from 1962 –1979 Germany, 1978

190 191 Photographic Credits Individual works of art appearing Photograph by Robert McKeever; Robert McKeever; p. 87 (95): Smithsonian Institution; p. 146 herein may be protected by p. 38: © Richard Artschwager, photograph courtesy the artist, (146): courtesy Mary Boone copyright in the United States of courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New Gallery; p. 146 (148): photograph America, or elsewhere, and may Photograph by Robert McKeever; York, Sadie Coles HQ, London, by Robert Gerhardt; p. 147: not be reproduced in any form p. 40 (41): photograph by Tim and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, photograph by Bill Orcutt; p. 164 without the permission of the McAfee; p. 40 (42) Leo Castelli Zurich. Photograph by Benoit (161, 162): © Richard Artschwager, rights holder. In reproducing the Gallery Records, Archives of Pailley; p. 92: Nathan Keay, courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photo- images contained in this publica- American Art, Smithsonian © Museum of Contemporary graph by Robert McKeever; p. 154: tion, the publisher obtained the Institution; p. 40 (42): photograph Art Chicago; p. 93 (97): © The courtesy Mary Boone Gallery, permission of the rights holders by Dorothy Zeidman; p. 41: Museum of Modern Art/Licensed New York; p. 158: Nathan Keay, whenever possible. The copyright © Richard Artschwager, courtesy by SCALA/Art Resource, NY; p. 94 © Museum of Contemporary Art holders, photographers, and Gagosian Gallery. Photograph by (99): courtesy Brooke Alexander, Chicago; p. 159: © 1996: Whitney sources of visual material other Robert McKeever; p. 50: © The Inc.; pp. 96–97: photograph by Museum of American Art, New than those indicated in the cap- Metropolitan Museum of Art. Robert Gerhardt; p. 99: © 2001, York. Photograph by Geoffrey tions are as follows. Every effort Image source: Art Resource, NY; Whitney Museum of American Clements; p. 163: © 2011 has been made to credit the p. 52: photograph by Sheldan C. Art, New York. Photograph by Kunsthaus Zürich. All rights copyright holders, photographers, Collins; p. 53: © The Museum of Eva Heyd; p. 103: photograph reserved; p. 165: © Richard and sources; if errors or omissions Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/ by Sheldan C. Collins; p. 106: Artschwager, courtesy Gagosian are identified, please contact the Art Resource, NY; p. 54 (54): photograph courtesy Smithsonian Gallery. Photograph by Robert Whitney Museum of American Art © The Museum of Modern Art/ American Art Museum, McKeever; p. 168: © Richard so that corrections can be made Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, Washington, D.C./Art Resource, Artschwager, courtesy Gagosian in any subsequent edition. NY; p. 56: photograph by Tiffany NY; p. 107: art copyright © The Gallery. Photograph by Robert Matson; p. 58: photograph by Ian Joseph and Robert Cornell McKeever; p. 169: © Richard Numbers in parentheses refer to Reeves; p. 60: photograph by Memorial Foundation/Licensed by Artschwager, courtesy Gagosian image numbers. D. James Dee; p. 61: photograph VAGA, New York, NY. Photograph Gallery. Photograph by Robert © 2012 The Museum of Fine Arts, copyright © The Art Institute of McKeever; p. 174: © Richard p. 6: copyright © Richard Boston; p. 63: © Schweizerisches Chicago; p. 108: art copyright Artschwager, courtesy Gagosian Artschwager, courtesy Sprüth Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, © Lester Beall, Jr., Trust/Licensed Gallery. Photograph by Robert Magers, Berlin and London; p. 7 Zürich, Philipp Hitz; p. 64 (65): by VAGA, New York, NY; p. 109 McKeever; p. 175 (169): © Richard (4): photograph by Richard photograph by Douglas M. Parker; (113): art copyright © Lester Beall, Artschwager, courtesy Gagosian Carafelli, ; p. 64 (66): image courtesy the Jr., Trust/Licensed by VAGA, New Gallery. Photograph by Robert p. 7 (5): art copyright © Jasper National Gallery of Art; p. 68 (68): York, NY; p. 109 (114): photograph McKeever; p. 176: courtesy Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New © The ; by Rudy Burkhardt; p. 111: © 2000 Gagosian Gallery. Photograph York, NY; p. 8 (6): photograph by p. 73 (78): © The Museum of Whitney Museum of American by Robert McKeever; p. 177: J. Littkeman; p. 8 (7): © Richard Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/ Art, New York. Photograph by © Richard Artschwager, courtesy Artschwager, courtesy Gagosian Art Resource, NY; p. 75: courtesy Steven Sloman; pp. 112–13: Gagosian Gallery. Photograph Gallery. Photograph by Robert Brooke Alexander, Inc.; p. 78: © The Museum of Modern Art/ by Robert McKeever; p. 181: McKeever; p. 9: © Richard copyright © Robert Bechtle, cour- Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, © Richard Artschwager, courtesy Artschwager, courtesy Gagosian tesy the artist and Gladstone NY; p. 116: photograph © André Gagosian Gallery. Photograph Gallery. Photograph by Robert Gallery, New York and Brussels; Morin; p. 118 (124): photograph by Robert McKeever; p. 185: McKeever; p. 24: photograph by p. 81: copyright © Sherrie Levine, by D. James Dee, (125); p. 118 © Richard Artschwager, courtesy Dorothy Zeidman; p. 10 (9): © The courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, © 1998, Whitney Museum of Gagosian Gallery. Photograph Museum of Modern Art/Licensed New York, copyright © Walker American Art, New York. Photo- by Robert McKeever; p. 187: by SCALA/Art Resource, NY; p. 11 Evans Archive, The Metropolitan graph by Geoffrey Clements; photograph © Henri Dauman/ (10): © Gerhard Richter 2012; p. 13 Museum of Art, New York, photo- p. 121: photograph by Tim DaumanPictures.com. All rights (13): Nathan Keay, © Museum of graph copyright © 2000 Whitney Nighswander/Imaging4Art; p. 122: reserved; p. 189 (middle): photo- Contemporary Art Chicago; p. 14 Museum of American Art, New photograph by Sheldan C. Collins; graphs and courtesy Georg Kargl (14): Leo Castelli Gallery Records, York. Photograph by Geoffrey p. 123: photograph by Dorothy Fine Arts, Vienna; p. 189 (right): Archives of American Art, Clements; p. 82 (86): courtesy the Zeidman; p. 134: photograph by photograph by Poul Ober; p. 191 Smithsonian Institution; p. 15 (15): artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Robert Gerhardt; p. 139: photo- (bottom right): photograph by © The Metropolitan Museum of New York. Photograph courtesy graph by Glenn Steigelman. Leo Christa Kujath; p. 192: copyright Art. Image source: Art Resource, Artists Space; p. 82 (87): photo- Castelli Gallery records, Archives © Robert Mapplethorpe NY; pp. 18–19 (18): photograph by graph by Brian Forrest; p. 84 of American Art, Smithsonian Foundation (used by permission); Mitro Hood; p. 22 (21): Courtesy (89): photograph by Nathan Institution; p. 140 (138): Photo- p. 193: photograph by Gary Mary Boone Gallery, New York; Rabin; p. 85 (90): © Tate, London graph by Tim Nighswander/ Graves; p. 194: photograph by p. 25: photograph courtesy The 2011 (91) photograph by Tim Imaging4Art; p. 140 (139): photo- Dietmar Schneider; p. 196 (left): Pace Gallery; p. 32: photograph Nighswander/Imaging4Art; p. 86: graph by Dorothy Zeidman; p. 143: photograph by Shunk-Kender, by Dorothy Zeidman; p. 33: photo- © Richard Artschwager, courtesy photograph by Dorothy Zeidman; image copyright © Roy graph by Adam Reich; p. 36: Gagosian Gallery. Photograph p. 144: photograph by Dorothy Lichtenstein Foundation; p. 206: photograph by Eric Oxendorf; by Robert McKeever; p. 87 (94): Zeidman; p. 145: Glenn Steigelman, photograph by Dorothy Zeidman; p. 37: © Richard Artschwager, © Richard Artschwager, courtesy photographer. Leo Castelli Gallery p. 211: photograph by Sidney B. courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Gagosian Gallery. Photograph by records, Archives of American Art, Felsen copyright © 2008

243 This catalogue was published on the occa- Copyright © 2012 by the Whitney Museum Library of Congress sion of the exhibition Richard Artschwager! of American Art, New York Cataloging-in-Publication Data curated by Jennifer R. Gross, Seymour H. Gross, Jennifer R. Knox, Jr., Curator of Modern and Contempo- All works by Richard Artschwager copyright rary Art, Yale University Art Gallery. © Richard Artschwager Richard Artschwager! / Jennifer R. Gross ; with contributions by Cathleen Chaffee, Whitney Museum of American Art Additional copyright notices appear on Ingrid Schaffner, Adam D. Weinberg. New York page 243. pages cm October 25, 2012 – February 3, 2013 All rights reserved. This book may not be This catalogue was published on the occa- Hammer Museum reproduced, in whole or in part, including sion of the exhibition Richard Artschwager!, Los Angeles illustrations, in any form (beyond that curated by Jennifer R. Gross, Seymour June 16 – September 1, 2013 copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 H. Knox, Jr., Curator of Modern and of the U.S. Copyright Law and except Contemporary Art, Yale University Art This exhibition is organized by the Whitney by reviewers for the public press), without Gallery. Museum of American Art, New York, written permission from the publisher. Includes bibliographical references. in association with the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. ISBN 978-0-300-18531-7 (hardback)

Whitney Museum of American Art 1. Artschwager, Richard, 1923 — Exhibitions. Significant support for the Whitney’s 945 Madison Avenue I. Artschwager, Richard, 1923 — Works. presentation is provided by The Broad Art New York, NY 10021 Selections. 2012. II. Whitney Museum of Foundation, Allison and Warren Kanders, whitney.org American Art. III. Title. Alice and Tom Tisch, and Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Augur. N6537.A72A4 2012 709.2 — dc23 This publication is made possible by a grant Yale University Press 2012019138 from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the 302 Temple Street Visual Arts. Additional support provided by P.O. Box 209040 Cover: detail of Untitled (Diptych), 1963 Maura and Mark H. Resnick, Anna Marie New Haven, CT 06520 (fig. 51); frontispiece: detail of Door, Mirror, and Robert F. Shapiro, and a Yale University yalebooks.com/art Table, Basket, Rug, Window D, 1975 (fig. 134); Art Gallery endowment created with a chal- pp. 46–47: detail of Destruction V, 1972 lenge grant from the National Endowment This publication was produced by the publi- (fig. 23); p. 74: detail of Locations, 1969 (fig. for the Arts. cations department at the Whitney Museum 80); pp. 90–91: detail of Locations, 1969 of American Art, New York: Beth Huseman, (fig. 80); p. 98: detail of Chair/Chair, 1987– interim head of publications; Beth Turk, 90 (fig. 105); pp. 126–27: detail of Description associate editor; Anita Duquette, manager, of a Table, 1964 (fig. 117); pp. 172–73: rights and reproductions; Kiowa Hammons, detail of Chair/Chair, 1987–90 (fig. 105). rights and reproductions assistant; Brian Reese, publications assistant 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Project manager: Beth Huseman Editor: David Frankel Proofreader: Susan Richmond Indexer: Susan G. Burke

Designed by Daphne Geismar Production by The Production Department Set in Frutiger Next Color separations by GHP, West Haven, CT Printed and bound by Midas Printing, Hong Kong