October 25, 2013–January 22, 2014

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Teacher Resource Unit

Since his emergence as an artist in the 1980s, Christopher Wool (b. 1955) has forged an agile, highly focused practice that ranges across processes and mediums, paying special attention to the complexities of painting. Filling the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda and an adjacent gallery, this exhibition explores the artist’s nuanced engagement with the question of how to make a picture.

This Resource Unit focuses on various aspects of Wool’s work and provides techniques for exploring both the visual arts and other areas of the curriculum. This guide also is available on the museum’s website at guggenheim.org/artscurriculum with images that can be downloaded or projected for classroom use. The images may be used for educational purposes only and are not licensed for commercial applications of any kind. Before bringing your class to the Guggenheim, we invite you to visit the exhibition, read the guide, and decide which aspects of the exhibition are most relevant to your students. For more information on scheduling a visit for your students, please call 212 423 3637.

For the educator, this exhibition provides a perfect opportunity to invite students of all ages to join in a meaningful journey into a visually rich and stimulating world.

Christopher Wool is generously supported by Guggenheim Partners, LLC.

Major support is provided by the Leadership Committee for the exhibition: Luhring Augustine, New York; The Brant Foundation, Inc.; Thompson Dean Family Foundation; Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson; Gagosian Gallery; Danielle and David Ganek; Brett and Dan Sundheim; and Zadig & Voltaire. Additional Leadership Committee gifts are provided by: The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica; Marguerite Steed Hoffman; Bridgitt and Bruce Evans; Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin; Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill; Agnes and Edward Lee; Nina and Frank Moore; Nancy and Woody Ostrow; Elham and Tony Salame; Cynthia and Abe Steinberger; Jennifer and David Stockman; Christen Sveaas; and David Teiger.

This exhibition is also supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, with additional funding provided by the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation. Christopher Wool in his studio, New York, 2000. Photo: Elfie Semotan

< About the Artist >

The artist Christopher Wool (b. 1955) forged his identity in two key places and times, both awash in societal changes: the South Side of Chicago in the 1960s and downtown New York in the 1970s. The sociopolitical unrest of the former is probably best exemplified by the 1968 Democratic National Convention in made a defining breakthrough between 1986 which Vietnam War protestors and others and 1987 when he began to use paint rollers clashed with conventioneers and Chicago incised with floral and geometric designs to police. Wool’s parents were liberal intellectuals transfer patterns in severe black enamel to a and even by the age of eleven, he had white ground. Collapsing any distinction discovered some of the avant-garde artists between the physical process of making the and movements in Chicago at the time— work and its visual content, these everyday perhaps most formatively, an exhibition of tools provided the artist with a repertoire of work by the local collective the Hairy Who, ready-made imagery that avoided both a group of Chicago-based artists in the 1960s spontaneous gesture and self-conscious known for their grotesque, fantastical compositional decisions. Instead, Wool surrealism. Wool studied at Sarah Lawrence focused on the small failures that occurred College for only one year before dropping within this mechanized framework, allowing out to head to New York City, where he breakdowns and slippages in the patterns to enrolled in the New York Studio School and accrue a delicate emotional resonance. later briefly studied film at New York University. Wool quickly became immersed In tandem with his pattern paintings, Wool in the countercultural milieu that was 1970s developed a body of work that similarly downtown New York, when the city was subverted a set of existing forms, this time known for cheap drugs and cheap rent. using language as his appropriated subject The anarchic subculture of scenes such as matter. Rendering a word or phrase in bold, punk and No Wave stretched to all art forms— blocky stencils arrayed across a geometric from fashion to music—and was characterized grid, he preserved the specific form and order by interdisciplinary experimentation, of the language, but freely stripped out antiestablishment views, and promotion of punctuation, disrupted conventional spacing, individual freedom. and removed letters. The resulting compositions oscillate between verbal In the subsequent decade, he set out to communication and pure formalism, with explore the possibilities of painting at a time their structural dissonance reflecting the when many considered the medium outmoded state of anxiety and agitation conjured by and irrelevant to avant-garde practice. He the texts themselves. The silkscreen has been a primary tool A critical conceptual shift occurred in Wool’s for Wool since the 1990s. In his earliest practice in the late 1990s when he began screenprinted paintings, he expanded on the to use his previous creative output as the vocabulary of the pattern works, enlarging material for new, autonomous works. Wool their stylized floral motifs for use as near- would take a photograph of a finished picture, abstract units of composition. In this period, transpose it to a silkscreen, and then reassign Wool frequently sabotaged his existing it wholesale to a fresh canvas. At times these forms as a way to covertly generate new acts of self-appropriation leave the original ones, layering the flower icons in dense, image untouched, although uncannily overlapping configurations that congeal into transformed by the process of mechanical a single black mass or become obscured with reproduction. In other examples, Wool passages of brusque overpainting. He also manually reworked his screenprinted doubles, introduced a new, entirely freehand gesture adding rollered paint or sprayed enamel in the form of a looping line applied with to create disorienting hybrids that entwine a spray gun—an irreverent interruption of recycled and original gestures. the imagery below that evokes an act of vandalism on a city street. Over the past decade, Wool’s simultaneous embrace and repression of painting’s Wool’s attraction to the bleak poetics of the expressive potential have culminated in an urban margins was amplified in his first major open-ended vein of works that he refers to photography series Absent Without Leave as his “gray paintings.” In these large-scale (1993). Taken during a period of solitary travels abstractions, Wool alternates between the act in Europe and elsewhere, the images are of erasing and the act of drawing, repeatedly saturated with an atmosphere of alienation wiping away sprayed black enamel paint to and shot in a raw, abrasive style that disregards create layers of tangled lines and hazy any concern for technical refinement. A similar washes. The artist describes the cycle of spirit of disaffection pervades a parallel body composition and loss inherent to this process of photographic work titled East Broadway as an attempt to harness the condition of Breakdown (1994–95/2002), but in this series doubt into a generative creative force. The Wool focused on a more familiar topography, same challenge to the authority of the unique, documenting his nightly walk home from original gesture is extended in Wool’s most his East Village studio. Highlighting the recent silkscreened canvases, which use digital city’s unadorned, off-hours existence, the processing to warp the scale, color, and photographs depict a nocturnal landscape resolution of his painted marks, often merging emptied of citizens and stripped down to a them with details from other paintings. A skeleton of street lamps, chain-link fences, single work might unify the traces of multiple blemished sidewalks, and parked cars. past moments of creation, as images return in new guises to be considered afresh within Wool’s evolving pictorial investigations. Painting is a visual medium, and they’re to be looked at. Like listening to music, it’s an emotional experience.1

< ROLLERS AND STAMPS >

Between 1986 and 1987, Christopher Wool layering these found forms so that they made a decisive breakthrough in his work created “pictorial discord.”5 with the discovery of a new tool that also provided him with new subject matter. At the time when Wool chose to focus on One day, he watched a worker paint the painting, an important critical question had walls outside his loft with a specialized roller. surrounded the medium for much of the The roller covered the wall with repeating twentieth century: had the possibilities of designs. It was manufactured with patterns painting been exhausted? One important (such as blossoms, vines, or abstract critic, Douglas Crimp (b. 1944), had written an geometries) incised in the surface and acted as influential article called “The End of Painting” a cheaper version of wallpaper. Soon after, in 1981, declaring that the medium was no Wool began to make paintings with this kind longer interesting to radical artistic practice or of roller, applying glossy black enamel to an historically or politically relevant. As critic aluminum surface primed with white paint. Suzanne Hudson puts it: “In the early 1980s, Wool called the result “an interesting friction the question was . . . how to paint as though it generated by putting forms that were mattered at a time when so many had reason supposed to be decorative in such severe to believe . . . that it didn’t.”6 terms.”2 He wanted his paintings to have a visual power that transcended decoration.

The limitations of this new process actually afforded Wool more creative freedom. The found forms of the roller avoided both figurative compositions and the clichés of earlier eras of abstract painting, circumventing what Wool called “a modernist kind of decision-making.”3 Wool embraced the accidents that the new tool inevitably led to, such as drips or smudges—what the curator of the exhibition calls the “visual noise emitted by methods of mechanical reproduction.”4 Soon after beginning to work with the rollers, he expanded his practice by using rubber stamps to create all-over patterns, often

Untitled, 1987. Enamel and Flashe on aluminum, 182.9 x 121.9 cm. Private collection VIEW + DISCUSS Show: Untitled (1987) FURTHER EXPLORATEXPLORATIONSIONS ▲ Ask students what they notice about the • Experiment with “found forms” by having students make work. Ask them to talk about the materials paintings using patterned rollers and/or stamps. Students can that the artist used. What can they guess make their own patterned rollers by gluing string, cardboard, or Styrofoam shapes to paper towel or toilet paper rolls. They can about how it was made? make their own stamps on flat cardboard surfaces or they can use

▲ manufactured stamps. They can use black ink, tempera, or acrylic Wool made this artwork using a paint roller on thick paper. Let them experiment at first and then complete a incised with patterns of vines. He used glossy more “finished” painting. Reflect on the process. How did using black enamel paint on aluminum painted premade patterned rollers or stamps affect their sense of control? white. Now that students know more about Did they feel the tools limited their creativity? If so, what were the benefits and drawbacks of these limitations? the special materials Wool was using, what can they tell about the process? How much • In 1981, the art critic Douglas Crimp wrote a seminal article called control do they think he had over it? “The End of Painting” in which he declared that painters had explored everything there was to explore about painting and that ▲ Ask students to look at this list of opposite it was no longer relevant. Ask students if they think this could words and vote on which they think apply ever be true. Why or why not? Stage a debate in which one half best to Wool’s painting: of the class argues Crimp’s side and the other half argues against him. Students should research the types of paintings that are Manufactured – handmade referenced in the essay, such as Abstract Expressionism, as well as Controlled – accidental the types of paintings that were being created in the late 1970s Pop culture – fine art and early ’80s. Which arguments were the most compelling? Who presented the best evidence? Discuss their votes. Critics and even Wool have said that his work lies somewhere • Crimp’s essay is available on the Internet. You may want to direct them to pages 75–76 in which he says that painting has been between these opposites. What could be dead and lingering on death row ever since the invention of interesting about making artwork that lies in photography. “After waiting out the entire era of modernism, between opposites? photography reappeared, finally to claim its inheritance. . . . Photography may have been invented in 1839, but it was only ▲ When Wool was making paintings, many in discovered in the 1970s.” Students can find a link to Crimp’s full the art world were wondering whether essay here: painting had reached its end. In other words, paintingandnewcontexts.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/douglas- had painters explored everything there was crimp_the-end-of-painting.pdf to explore about painting? One critic puts it this way: “In the early 1980s, the question • As an alternative or extension to the debate above, ask students was . . . how to paint as though it mattered to write a piece of criticism in which they argue for the end to at a time when so many had reason to some other cultural phenomenon. For example, they could argue believe . . . that it didn’t.”7 Ask students to for the end of books (in favor of digital readers) or telephone calls (in favor of texts). Ask students to share their criticisms and respond to this idea. How did Wool paint? for other students to play devil’s advocate with their arguments. How is Untitled (1987) different from other paintings students have seen? I think of myself primarily as an abstract painter, but I find that in making paintings there is a little bit of investigation into what abstract painting can be.8

< WORDS >

Around the same time Christopher Wool was are left out. Reading them for meaning can developing his pattern paintings, he began to often be like putting together a puzzle. The experiment with using words. Like rollers and experience, says the curator, is like learning to stamps, words were preexisting forms that read for the first time all over again. provided a paradoxically freeing limitation to his experimentation. The story goes that his There is also an overarching mood of paranoia Eureka moment for using language as his and anxiety to many of Wool’s chosen texts. subject matter came in the form of a brand- One of his best-known word paintings, which new white delivery truck. Someone had was first created as a work on paper, focuses spray-painted SEX LUV across its surface. In a on the command, SELL THE HOUSE SELL 1987 work on paper, Wool painted exactly THE CAR SELL THE KIDS, a quote from these letters using blocky stencils. Wool had the 1979 film Apocalypse Now. Set in the long been fascinated by the way words are Vietnam War, the words come from a scene transformed when “exposed to the cacophony in the movie in which we see a letter a of the city,” writes the curator.97In graffiti, on captain sent to his wife while missing in billboards, in advertisements, words change in action. In its entirety, the letter read: SELL both form and function when they became a THE HOUSE/SELL THE CAR/SELL THE part of the urban landscape. KIDS/FIND SOMEONE ELSE/FORGET IT!/I’M NEVER COMING HOME The language in Wool’s paintings is often BACK/FORGET IT!!! treated as much as abstract shapes as words with a communicative function. They are not subjected to conventional spacing or Apocalypse Now, 1988. Enamel on paper, 71.8 x 65.4 cm. Collection of Stephanie Seymour, courtesy The Brant punctuation rules. They are fractured; letters Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut VIEW + DISCUSS Show: Apocalypse Now (1988) FURTHER EXPLORATEXPLORATIONSIONS ▲ Ask students what they notice about • Wool finds his phrases in many places. The first phrase that the artwork. Describe the way the words inspired him to make word paintings was spray-painted on the side of a truck. The Apocalypse Now phrase is from a film. Ask are written. students if they’ve ever been fascinated by a line, phrase, or word

▲ they’ve encountered in a movie, book, or even on the street. Wool has created many artworks in which What struck them about it? Was it the rhythm? The humor? The he uses stencils and paint to create words. spelling? The context? The meaning? The visual impact? Ask Some say he uses his words like shapes. students to collect phrases from all over their life: the street, their Do students agree? Why or why not? homes, their favorite media sources. They should keep a journal for at least a couple days of these phrases. Then, in class, ask

▲ them to look at the phrases and think about what kinds of phrases  Ask a volunteer to read the words or lines appeal to them. Finally, ask them to write each one on a dramatically. Then ask students to imagine separate index card or Post-it®. which words might come next. • Challenge students to select just one of their phrases, lines, or Can students imagine these words words, and using stencils with paint or colored pencils, create an embedded in a scenario? Who are the artwork with the words. They can break it up or lay it out in any characters? What is happening? In small way they want. They can use any color(s) they want. Talk about groups, challenge them to act out a short the works as a class. Which kinds of phrases did students pick? scene in which these words are one line of How did they lay them out? What effects and/or moods do their dialogue. choices create? These words were taken from a film • Wool is not the first artist to use words in his artwork. Words called Apocalypse Now, the same title as appear in Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) collages using newspaper. the painting. Set in the Vietnam War, the Conceptual artists Jenny Holzer (b. 1950), Barbara Kruger (b. 1945), and Lawrence Weiner (b. 1942) also have used words in words come from a scene in the movie their work. Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) used words like that reveals a letter a captain sent to his graffiti and as political and social critique. Make artworks by these wife while missing in action. In its artists and others available to the class. In small groups, students entirety, the letter read: SELL THE should discuss the different approaches and outcomes to HOUSE/SELL THE CAR/SELL THE incorporating words. Next, students can investigate one of the KIDS/FIND SOMEONE ELSE/FORGET artists further and write a letter to that artist telling them what they think of their use of words and asking them questions about IT!/I’M NEVER COMING HOME what they do and why. BACK/FORGET IT!!! Ask students why they think Wool was interested in this excerpt. Have they ever repeated lines from movies? Why? What mood do his chosen words create in the viewer? ▲ Wool is interested in words embedded within urban public spaces: in graffiti, on billboards, in advertising. How is it different to see words in these contexts—or on the walls of a museum—than on the pages of a book? These other mediums [photography, artist’s books, painting, digital work] kind of loop back on each other in the work.10

< PHOTOGRAPHY >

In the late 1980s, Christopher Wool began produced over-the-counter 4 x 6–inch prints, to incorporate photography into his artistic but this time he used Photoshop to make tonal process. He was not interested in making adjustments. the refined large-format color photographs that were popular at the time. Rather, his Themes or motifs from his paintings can be photographs were almost exclusively black frequently traced in his photographs. and white, small in scale, and presented in Language, blemishes, and patterns can be groups instead of individually. His work in the found in the images, as well as an overall medium rejects precise composition and finish exploration of degradation and decay. in favor of a raw, almost casual aesthetic that was deliberately imperfect. Wool is also well-known for photographing his own paintings, again without the expected His first series, Absent Without Leave (1993), emphasis on technical “skill.” He shoots his was first published in the form of an artist’s works installed in his studio, galleries, and book. It consists of snapshots that are ill- domestic spaces in black-and-white composed, out of focus, and poorly lit. The compositions that defy conventional guidelines images, shot during Wool’s travels in Europe for photographing artworks. Frequently, his and elsewhere, were made with 35 mm film, works are shown leaning against something, developed at over-the-counter photo labs in partially obstructed by doorways or columns, or 4 x 6–inch format, and then transformed with a even still in progress. Curator James Rondeau photocopier into 8 1/2 x 11–inch sheets. For his writes that by presenting his work this way, next photobook, East Broadway Breakdown Wool fights “the precise, polished nature of (1994–95/2002), he took thousands of photos typical gallery or museum documentation. at night, using a flash, of the dilapidated areas With his photographs, the artist insists on of New York City between his East Village retaining the sense of insubordination found in studio and Chinatown home. Again, he his paintings.”11

Absent Without Leave, 1993. 188 black-and-white East Broadway Breakdown, 1994–95/2002. 160 inkjet prints, photocopies, 21.6 x 27.9 cm each. Collection of the artist 21.6 x 27.9 cm each, P.P. 1/1, edition of 3. Private collection VIEW + DISCUSS Show: Absent Without Leave (1993) FURTHER EXPLORATEXPLORATIONSIONS ▲ Ask students what they notice about the • Wool chose as his subject matter many things that he observes in photograph from Wool’s series Absent the course of his own life. He photographed what he saw on his walks between his home and his art studio. He photographed the Without Leave (1993). Compare this photo paintings he made. In January 1996, when a fire destroyed much to the one from Wool’s photobook East of his studio, Wool documented the loss for an insurance claim Broadway Breakdown (1994–95/2002). with his camera. Later, he started to consider these photographs art. As critic James Rondeau has said: “In this respect, his ▲ Ask students to work in pairs and discuss photographs constitute the biography of his paintings. And, at the photos in terms of these elements: the same time, they suggestively structure a loose autobiography of their maker.”13 Ask students to take a camera—even a cell lighting, focus, composition, cropping, phone camera—around with them for a day. Challenge them to subject matter, and perspective. What capture the things that they see on their daily walks, the events choices did Wool make? Are these the that happen to them, and the objects that matter to them. Ask choices students would expect? them to share these photographs with other students in small groups. In what ways do these photographs “structure a loose ▲ Wool deliberately ignored the conventional autobiography of their maker?” (If you do not have access to “skills” of a good photographer. Sometimes, cameras, ask students to make a list throughout the day of things they would like to capture. Turn this list into “extended captions” he did not even use his viewfinder when he in which students describe the intended photograph.) was taking pictures, which meant he would not know the borders of the photograph. • Some of Wool’s photographs seem to have given rise to certain What do students think about this gestures or patterns in his paintings, or perhaps the paintings methodology? How does it relate to the themselves inspired his choice of subject matter for his subject matter? photographs! For this assignment, students will take photographs to inspire an abstract painting. They should be on the lookout for

▲ patterns, shapes, or lines in their environment that they might be

Some say the imperfection of the photos able to use in a painting. They can use elements from multiple deliberately undermines the art world’s photographs in their paintings. At the end, ask them what it was emphasis on image quality and balanced like to have “source material” for their abstractions versus starting composition. Do students agree and do they from scratch. think this is a good thing? Why or why not? • Wool created Absent Without Leave (1993) by printing his ▲ photographs at a cheap over-the-counter photo lab in a

Wool took the photographs in East Broadway 4 x 6–inch format and enlarging them on photocopiers to create Breakdown (1994–95/2002) while walking 8 1/2 x 11–inch versions. The photocopier further degraded the between his home and where he worked in quality of the photographs, heightening the contrast between the his art studio. As his friend, the artist Richard blacks and whites. For this activity, ask students to create books Prince (b. 1940), has written: “They’re of photographs, images, drawings, or writing. Then create these evidence of where he’s been. What he’s books using a photocopier. Ask students: What themes or motifs tie the books together? How did the photocopier alter their done. What he looks at. . . . His photographs original work? are not that different from his paintings. I’m talking aesthetically. SIDE BY SIDE. They have the same look.”12 ▲ Ask students to compare these photographs to Wool’s paintings in the other sections. If you’re not fearless about changes, then you won’t progress.14

< Gesture and Erasure >

In 1998, Christopher Wool began to use his became frustrated, picked up a rag soaked in own paintings as the starting point for new turpentine, and wiped away the lines using autonomous works. The method was relatively rapid gestures. He then began to experiment simple. He used an image of one of his with this technique with black enamel, leading finished paintings to create asilkscreen . Then to a body of work he refers to as his “gray he applied this silkscreen to a new canvas. paintings.” He alternated this act of erasing He also painted extra layers on top of his with the act of “drawing” (Wool considers silkscreens. With Last Year Halloween Fell on spray-painting closer to drawing than a Weekend (2004), for instance, he applied a painting). On these new canvases, black lines layer of scarlet spray paint to the silkscreened were swallowed in layers of gray erasure and gray forms of Run Down Run (2003). then complicated by further layers of lines. Addition was as important as subtraction. These new paintings brought up many Wool described this process of making work in theoretical questions. Can an image that four words: change, doubt, indecisiveness, and depicts a previous artwork be considered poetry. The works have been described as an abstract, or is it representational? Is there argument he was having with himself—a a hierarchy between an original and a copy constant interplay of concession and rebuttal. if, as in this case, the copy is considered a Wool has said that, “the traditional idea of an new and original artwork? objective masterpiece is no longer possible,” and “without objectivity you’re left with doubt, In 2000, Wool discovered another new and doubt insists on plurality.”15 process. He was working with a sprayed composition of yellow enamel when he

Last Year Halloween Fell on a Weekend, Run Down Run, 2003. Enamel on linen, Untitled, 2007. Enamel on linen, 274.3 x 274.3 cm. 2004. Enamel and silkscreen ink on linen, 243.8 x 182.9 cm. Private collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 264.2 x 198.1 cm. Courtesy Gagosian Los Angeles Nina and Gordon Bunshaft Bequest Fund, 2010 Gallery, New York VIEW + DISCUSS Show: Last Year Halloween Fell on a Weekend FURTHER EXPLORATEXPLORATIONSIONS (2004) • Wool made new paintings based on old paintings using a ▲ Look together at the painting. Ask students silkscreen process. For this activity, students will approximate this process using a photocopier, another tool Wool has used in his what they notice. Now, compare it to Run work. Have students create an abstract black-and-white drawing. Down Run (2003). Then make a photocopy of each of the students’ works at the same scale. Ask them to compare the results. How has the act of ▲ Tell students that the former piece was made photocopying changed their original? Next, allow them to add by creating a silkscreen, or print, of the latter another layer to the photocopy version of their drawing with the and then spray-painting another layer on top. same material they used for the original or with additional materials. (You can continue the process a couple times by The exhibition’s curator has described Wool’s photocopying this new version if you’d like.) Ask students to silkscreens as “portraits” of his paintings. She reflect on the process. Would they consider their copied version writes that, “they delineate an interior as well an original or a copy? Would they consider it a “portrait” of their as an exterior likeness, as if drilling down into original drawing? What does it reveal about the drawing that the the subconscious of the original.”16 Ask first version didn’t? students to consider this idea. Can you make a “portrait” of a painting? How might it reveal • Wool’s erasure paintings are just as much about addition as they are about subtraction. For this activity, provide students with something about the “subconscious” or drawing materials, such as pencils and charcoal, and erasing “interior” of the original painting? materials, such as erasers and blending stumps. Ask them to experiment with creating an abstract line drawing, then erasing ▲ Now, share four words with your students: sections of it (or all of it), then adding more lines. Do they ever change, doubt, indecisiveness, and poetry. erase all evidence of the drawing? How does their drawing reveal Ask them to discuss when they have had evidence of their process? You might want to play students this video of Wool describing his process: experiences that call to mind these words.

▲ youtube.com/watch?v=6RD3K6aBLQ0 Look together at Untitled (2007). Wool has described the process of making paintings like • Some of Wool’s works have been described as an argument he is this one with the words above. Ask students having with himself. When he eliminates elements of his paintings where they see evidence of these words in the and then adds new ones, he is constantly conceding to and painting. rebutting his own points. For this activity, students will “have an argument with themselves” as they write a poem. Ask them to

▲ first free-write about what they think when they look at the works To create this piece, Wool used turpentine- in this section. Emphasize that this is a free-write so anything that soaked rags to “erase” the black enamel lines comes to mind is acceptable. They should not edit themselves. he had sprayed onto the canvas. He then Then, ask them to look back at their writing and circle words or added more layers of spray paint. Have you phrases they like and cross out words or phrases they don’t like. ever revised something you created? What Next, they should transcribe each word or phrase they like separately on a Post-it® and arrange these Post-its® to form a emotions did you feel during this process? poem. They also can add a couple new words or phrases to the

▲ mix. Ask them: How did this process differ from writing a poem Works like Untitled (2007) have been from scratch? described as an argument Wool was having with himself—a constant interplay of concession and rebuttal. Ask students to put this argument into words. The tools have changed and the ways of exploring visual things have expanded. But it’s not a paradigm shift, it’s the same old paradigm.17

< Digital Transformation >

In recent years, Christopher Wool has been alter them, and, thus, to continue to engage exploring the potential of digital technology with his process. He also has used Photoshop to help him revisit and transform his paintings to experiment with scale, enlarging passages in new ways. After experimenting with from works on paper, digitally manipulating photographing his paintings and then using them, and then transforming them into their digital images to create a silkscreened 10-foot-tall canvases using silkscreen. version of each piece, he extended this process by using Photoshop to dissect, combine, and In Untitled (2009), he synthesizes traces recolor the paintings. Now, he often crops of many of his earlier paintings. A forceful elements of the photographed paintings and black hooked line from a gray painting alters their depth, contrast, and registration. (Untitled, 2007), for instance, reappears, He also draws on the photographs digitally to this time weaker, a shadow of its former self. create lines that are only distinguishable from the actual spray-painted lines of the painting in that they have no drips or smudges.

While Photoshop is traditionally used to smooth out imperfections in an image, Wool’s above, left to right: Untitled, 2009. Silkscreen ink on linen, methods reveal flaws such as disintegrating 304.8 x 243.8 cm. Private collection image-resolution. He uses the possibilities of Untitled, 2009. Enamel and silkscreen ink on paper, 182.9 x 140.3 cm. digital technology to revisit his own works, to Private collection VIEW + DISCUSS Show: Untitled (2009) FURTHER EXPLORATEXPLORATIONSIONS ▲ Ask students if they’ve ever created a work • Some of Wool’s images began by “drawing” with spray paint on of art digitally, such as with a digital camera, canvas and were then manipulated and added to in a digital format. Assign every student to make an abstract drawing. Then, a mouse, or Photoshop. How was this scan in all of their drawings. Challenge students to create a experience different than creating art in a digitally manipulated version of their drawing using a program more traditional way (i.e., drawing with a such as Photoshop. Then, tell every student that in addition to mouse versus drawing with a pencil)? their drawing they will have access to the other students’ drawings. They can pull marks or gestures from any of these ▲ Ask students to list words that come to drawings into their new works of art. They also can add new marks using Photoshop’s drawing tools. How was the process of mind when they see this image. making these “mash-ups” different than the process of drawing a

▲ brand-new artwork? Which process did students prefer and why? Wool makes digital images of his paintings so that he can experiment with them in • For a more traditional version of the above activity, you can Photoshop. He then combines elements assign students to cut up their abstract drawings and exchange from several of his paintings to make new pieces with other students. With a new piece of paper and glue, ones. He even adds layers to these images students can then make new mash-up collages of original marks from their own drawings and from their classmates’ drawings. using drawing functions in Photoshop. Thus, Finally, students can add new marks on top of their collages. these paintings are made with a combination (As an alternative to cutting and pasting, students can use of traditional studio painting and digital tracing paper to “borrow” marks from their original drawings and manipulation. Can students see evidence their classmates’ drawings.) Ask the same reflection questions in the painting of its multilayered process— as above. specifically, of the parts created digitally versus the parts made with spray paint? ▲ Ask students if they have ever edited an image digitally. (If necessary, point out to students that programs like Instagram and Facebook allow for quick editing, such as cropping and adding filters.) Compare this process to when they have made “edits” to drawings, paintings, or other artworks. ▲ Discuss Wool’s quote at the beginning of this section (after making sure students are clear on the meaning of the word “paradigm”). How much do students think digital editing such as on Instagram, Facebook, and Photoshop changes the world, or more specifically, “visual things”? Resources VOCABULARY youtube.com/watch?v=6RD3K6aBLQ0 Christopher Wool onhisart youtube.com/watch?v=7nbJMXyyMNs Christopher Wool artisttalkatDCA.flv Videos Christopher Wool . Edited byHans Werner Holzwarth. Christopher Wool . Edited byKatherine Brinson.Texts by Books Merriam-Webster). A premade shapeorstructure (adapted from Found forms(n.) that drieswithaglossyappearance. A paint thatflowsouttoasmoothcoat whenappliedand Enamel (n.) or accentuate subject matter (notfrom Merriam-Webster). To remove theouterparts ofanimagetoimprove framing Crop, specificallyinphotography (v.) especially intoartisticform. Arrangement intospecificproportion or relation and C Cologne: Taschen, 2008. Jim Lewis, GlennO’Brien, andAnnePontégnie. Texts by Eric Banks, AnnGoldstein,Richard Hell, Foundation, 2013. Rondeau. New York: SolomonR.Guggenheim Brinson, SuzanneHudson, Richard Prince, andJames ompo sition (n.) 18

50watts.com/Smoke-Hairy-Who chicagoreader.com/chicago/a-hairy-whos-who/ The Hairy Who theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/07/america-in-the-1970s- Photos of1970s New York inTheAtlantic magazine interviewmagazine.com/art/christopher-wool-richard-hell/ Interview withChristopher Wool inInterview Magazine luhringaugustine.com/artists/christopher-wool/ Christopher Wool’s page for Luhring AugustineGallery wool735.com/cw/home/ Christopher Wool’s officialwebsite Websites organdy screen ontothematerial tobeprinted. A stencilprocess inwhichinkisforced through asilkor Silks musical,literary,An artistic, ormechanicaldesignform. P A philosophicalortheoretical framework ofanykind. P content?oid=892415 new-york-city/100557/ attern (n.) aradigm (n.) creen (n.) NOTES 1 Youtube.com/watch?v=7nbJMXyyMNs.

2 Katherine Brinson, “Trouble Is My Business,” in Christopher Wool, ed. Katherine Brinson (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2013), p. 38.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid., p. 39.

5 Ibid.

6 Suzanne Hudson, “Fuck ’Em If They Can’t Take a Joke,” in Christopher Wool, ed. Katherine Brinson (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2013), p. 54. 7 Ibid.

8 Youtube.com/watch?v=6RD3K6aBLQ0.

9 Brinson, “Trouble Is My Business,” p. 40.

10 Youtube.com/watch?v=7nbJMXyyMNs.

11 James Rondeau, “Christopher Wool’s Photography: Uses and Abuses,” in Christopher Wool, ed. Katherine Brinson (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2013), p. 231.

12 Richard Prince, “WOOLWLOOOLOWOOWLLOWO OWOLOOLWLOOW,” in Christopher Wool, ed. Katherine Brinson (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2013), p. 236.

13 Rondeau, “Christopher Wool’s Photography,” p. 232.

14 Interviewmagazine.com/art/christopher-wool-richard- hell/#page2.

15 Christopher Wool, conversation with Katherine Brinson.

16 Brinson, “Trouble Is My Business,” p. 47.

17 Christopher Wool, quoted in “A Conversation with Christopher Wool,” in Albert Oehlen, exh. cat. (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2012), pp. 50–51.

18 From Merriam-Webster unless otherwise noted.