DOCSLIB.ORG

Exhibition Checklist

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Exhibition Checklist 65 WORKS SELECTED BY JAMES WELLING: Exhibition and Sale to Benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Arts December 9, 2016 – January 28, 2017 David Zwirner 533 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 65 WORKS SELECTED BY JAMES WELLING: Exhibition and Sale to Benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Arts December 9, 2016 – January 28, 2017 David Zwirner 533 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 Artist James Welling selected the 65 works in this exhibition and sale and has overseen their installation at David Zwirner. Forty-nine works are from FCA’s collection of work donated by artists to support FCA’s programs, including works from FCA’s first benefit exhibition in 1963. Sixteen new works have been contributed by artists at Jim’s invitation. All works in this exhibition are for sale. The artists have generously donated these works to benefit FCA’s programs of support for individual artists. 1. Diane Arbus Young Couple on a Bench in Washington Square Park, N.Y.C., 1965, printed later Gelatin silver print 20 x 16 inches Edition 25 of 75 Estate stamp verso in ink Signed verso in ink by Doon Arbus, for the Estate of Diane Arbus; printed by Neil Selkirk $18,000 When I was eighteen I saw the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in Pittsburgh. Like for so many others, this was a life-changing event. After seeing Merce perform, I studied dance for a year in Pittsburgh and in Hartford. 2. Roger Ballen Trails, 2003, 2003 Although I chose photography as my primary medium, my Fibre based selenium toned silver print dance experiences were deeply affecting. Three years ago, 14 x 14 inches when I began to use dance imagery in a new series of Edition 1 of 20 photographs, I felt that I was returning to a lost love. $5,000 As I photographed different dance companies I became aware of the financial precariousness of the performance arts. It is an honor to select works for the Foundation for Contemporary Arts show and sale to benefit the arts community. Looking at the range of FCA’s holdings starting from the early 1960s to the present, I was excited by the possibility of juxtaposing a range of artistic practices and generations. For instance, I was intrigued by including Paul Brach, who was the Dean at Cal Arts when I was a student there in the early 1970s, with younger artists whom I taught when I 3. Robert Barry was at UCLA. To augment and bring the show and sale up Untitled, 1988 Acrylic on paper to the present, I reached out to sixteen artists to contribute 25 x 25 inches new works. $15,000 —James Welling 4. Jennifer Bartlett 5 a.m., from “AIR: 24 Hours” series, 1994 Etching, sugarlift-aquatint, drypoint, and scraping on Twinrocker handmade paper 17 x 17 inches Edition 27 of 65 $2,500 3 9. Cecily Brown 5. Jake Berthot Young Spartans (After Degas), Untitled, 1989 2012 Enamel and graphite on Watercolor and gouache on paper paper 1 30 x 22½ inches 12¼ x 17 ⁄8 inches $4,000 $18,000 6. Walead Beshty Foundation for Contemporary Arts Benefit Contribution Form, 10. Chryssa October 8, 2016 Unmailed Letter, 1960 Cyanotype, ink, and toner Plaster relief mounted in box on paper frame 11 x 8½ inches 24½ x 27½ x 4¾ inches $8,000 $50,000 11. Chuck Close Self-Portrait, 1991 7. Bruce Boice Oil, ink, and masking tape on Greek VII, 1978 Polaroid photograph mounted Pencil on paper on foamcore 3 15½ x 19½ inches 28 x 22 ⁄8 inches $1,000 $100,000 12. Anne Collier Woman with a Camera (35 8. Paul Brach mm, diptych), 2009 Untitled, 1964 Inkjet print Paint and colored pencil 21 x 24 inches [each] 18 x 18 inches Diptych, edition 5 of 10 $3,500 $6,000 4 5 13. Sue de Beer Still from Black Sun, Julia Hartmann (key lighting), 17. Katharina Fritsch and 2004-2005 Alexej Koschkarow C-print mounted on “Damenwahl,” Kunsthalle, aluminum Düsseldorf, 1999 39¼ x 28¾ inches Signed exhibition poster Edition 2 of 6 33 x 23½ inches $7,500 $100 14. Tacita Dean Intrepid Potash, 2014 Hand printed color photograph on half matte 18. Anna Gaskell resin coated Hunt, 2008 photographic paper C-print mounted on aluminum 5 15¾ x 23 ⁄8 14¼ x 19¼ inches Edition of 20 Edition 1 of 5 €1200 $7,500 19. Robert Gober 15. Willie Doherty Urology Appointment, 2007 Grey Day XI, 2007 Wood engraving, lead type, Framed silver gelatin print and polymer engraving on mounted on aluminum Somerset Satin paper 3 39 ⁄8 x 33½ inches 2 x 3½ inches Edition 1 of 3 AP 2 of 5, edition of 15 $10,000 $18,000 16. Suzan Frecon 20. Katy Grannan blue study from a painting Dale, Pacifica (II), 2006,2008 form, variation 4, 2013 C-print Watercolor on Arches paper 16 x 20 inches 7 11¼ x 14 ⁄8 inches Edition 1 of 12 $30,000 $4,500 6 7 24. Michael Hurson Deux crayons dans une 21. Stephen Greene chambre (MH 22prt), 1987 Inquisitions #5, 1981 Aquatint, pencil, and ink on Mixed media on paper paperboard 16½ x 23 inches 21¾ x 29½ inches Working Proof #2 $1,000 $4,500 25. Jasper Johns 22. Lyle Ashton Harris “Merce Cunningham and Malcolm X T-shirt, Rome, Dance Company (Target with 1992, 2015 Four Faces),” 1968 C-print Poster 20½ x 15 inches 35 x 23 inches Edition 3 of 3 $500 $7,500 $795 with frame 23. Rachel Harrison 26. Jasper Johns Unfinished Masterpiece Valentine, 2010 One, 2014 Intaglio (photogravure, Mixed media on inkjet sugarlift, aquatint, spit-bite) paper 13½ x 14 inches 13 x 19 inches Edition 16 of 40, with 6 AP $20,000 $15,000 Rachel Harrison* 27. Annette Lemieux Unfinished Masterpiece “Compelling Alliances: Two, 2014 Panel Discussion,” Poster Mixed media on inkjet (photograph of Artist), Brown paper Center, Maryland College of 13 x 19 inches Art, 2005 $20,000 Signed poster *May be viewed upon 48½ x 24 inches request $100 8 9 32. Jane Logemann 28. Zoe Leonard Border - Japanese, Hebrew, Roll #18, 2006/16 Russian, French, Arabic, C-print Korean, 2003 22 x 18 ½ inches Ink, oil, and varnish on muslin Edition 2 of 6, with 2 AP 43 x 27¾ inches $30,000 $8,000 33. Andrew Lord 29. Julian Lethbridge Grey Series #1, 1987 Study for Screen Tool I, Lithograph and ink on 2016 Kasugami paper Oil and oil stick on linen 38½ x 25½ inches 24 x 20 inches Edition 5 of 25 $15,000 $5,000 34. Jonas Mekas Collection of 40 Film Stills from Scenes of the Life of Andy Warhol (Andy Warhol at the first public appearance of the Velvet Underground on 30. Siobhan Liddell January 14, 1966), 2008 Untitled, 2010 C-print Paper and thread on linen 16 x 20 inches 27 x 20 inches Edition 1 of 3 $9,500 $5,000 35. Lisa Milroy 31. Glenn Ligon Blue Pencil, 2008 The Learys, 2001 Oil on canvas with glued Oil crayon on paper collage 12¼ x 12½ inches 14¾ x 16 inches $20,000 $6,350 10 11 36. Peter Moore Al Hansens’s “Pigeons Eating Art,” 4th Annual New York Avant Garde Festival, Central Park, NYC, 40. Judy Pfaff Sept. 9, 1966, 1966 Untitled, 1993 Gelatin silver print Mixed media on paper 14 x 11 inches 20 x 30 inches $5,000 $18,000 41. Ellen Phelan Clouds over Narrows (Lake 37. Carrie Moyer Champlain), 1998 Fandango, 2009 Watercolor and gouache on Acrylic and glitter on canvas paper 30 x 20 inches 15½ x 17½ inches $14,000 $18,000 38. Joan Nelson Untitled (Agony In The Garden Giovanni Bellini), 1996 42. Harvey Quaytman Acrylic gouache, acrylic, Bayoman, 1991 ink, and oil on paper Acrylic and glass on canvas 11½ x 11½ inches 28 x 28 inches $3,000 $55,000 39. Gabor Peterdi “Recent Graphics,” Sidney 43. Robert Rauschenberg Kanegis Gallery, Boston, Lily Scent, 1981 1966 Lithograph Exhibition poster 32 x 24 inches 20 x 11 inches Edition of 50 $250 $5,000 12 13 44. Dorothea Rockburne Musician Angel, 1980 48. Dorothea Tanning Watercolor on velum Fiesta, 1980 mounted on 100% rag Graphite and watercolor on board paper 20 x 15 inches 25¾ x 34¾ inches $30,000 $24,000 45. Michelle Segre 49. Al Taylor Motormutt, 2000 Untitled (Marker), 1988 India ink on paper Wood and wire 13½ x 15½ inches 74 x 12 x 29 inches $1,800 $280,000 46. Keith Sonnier Elliptical Orbit, 1991 Silver aluminum sheet silkscreened with oil based 50. Wolfgang Tillmans inks Faltenwurf (skylight), 2009 48 x 24 inches C-print Edition of 6, with 3 AP 16 x 12 inches (unique) Edition 5 of 10, with 1 AP $5,000 $8,350 51. Deborah Turbeville 47. Pat Steir Audrey in antique Chanel I Don’t Know, 1975-76 dress, Paris, 1998, 1998 Ink on paper Gelatin silver print 22¼ x 29¾ inches 14 x 10 inches $24,000 $5,000 14 15 52. Unknown “M. et M.lle Cabanel: La Danse Armée,” L’Ecole Des 55. Kara Walker Maris, Paris, France, 1823 Untitled, 1993 Poster Unique ink transfer on paper 20¾ x 16¾ inches 50 x 38 inches $150 $100,000 56. Andy Warhol “Conspiracy Means to Breathe Together,” Art Auction and 52. a. Unknown Sale, Fund for the Conspiracy “Narrative, Single Channel Defense (Electric Chair), Video,” Artsonje Center, LoGiudice Gallery, Chicago, Seoul, South Korea, 1998 1969 Exhibition poster Poster 23½ x 17¼ inches 34 x 22 inches $125 $1,500 53.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Pat Adams Selected Solo Exhibitions
    PAT ADAMS Born: Stockton, California, July 8, 1928 Resides: Bennington, Vermont Education: 1949 University of California, Berkeley, BA, Painting, Phi Beta Kappa, Delta Epsilon 1945 California College of Arts and Crafts, summer session (Otis Oldfield and Lewis Miljarik) 1946 College of Pacific, summer session (Chiura Obata) 1948 Art Institute of Chicago, summer session (John Fabian and Elizabeth McKinnon) 1950 Brooklyn Museum Art School, summer session (Max Beckmann, Reuben Tam, John Ferren) SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2017 Bennington Museum, Bennington, Vermont 2011 National Association of Women Artists, New York 2008 Zabriskie Gallery, New York 2005 Zabriskie Gallery, New York, 50th Anniversary Exhibition: 1954-2004 2004 Bennington Museum, Bennington, Vermont 2003 Zabriskie Gallery, New York, exhibited biennially since 1956 2001 Zabriskie Gallery, New York, Monotypes, exhibited in 1999, 1994, 1993 1999 Amy E. Tarrant Gallery, Flyn Performing Arts Center, Burlington, Vermont 1994 Jaffe/Friede/Strauss Gallery, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 1989 Anne Weber Gallery, Georgetown, Maine 1988 Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Retrospective: 1968-1988 1988 Addison/Ripley Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1988 New York Academy of Sciences, New York 1988 American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C. 1986 Haggin Museum, Stockton, California 1986 University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 1983 Image Gallery, Stockbridge, Massachusetts 1982 Columbia Museum of Art, University of South Carolina, Columbia,
    [Show full text]
  • The Museum of Modern Art
    The Museum of Modern Art For Immediate Release May 1995 ARTIST'S CHOICE: ELIZABETH MURRAY June 20 - August 22, 1995 An exhibition conceived and installed by American artist Elizabeth Murray is the fifth in The Museum of Modern Art's series of ARTIST'S CHOICE exhibitions. On view from June 20 to August 22, 1995, ARTIST'S CHOICE: ELIZABETH MURRAY presents more than 100 drawings, paintings, prints, and sculptures by approximately seventy women artists. The exhibition involves works created between 1914 and 1973, including those ranging from early modernists Frida Kahlo and Liubov Popova to contemporary artists Nancy Graves and Dorothea Rockburne. Murray focuses particular attention on artists who made their reputations during the 1950s and 1960s, such as Lee Bontecou, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, when Murray herself was studying and forming her style. This exhibition and the accompanying video and panel discussion are made possible by a generous grant from The Charles A. Dana Foundation. Organized in collaboration with Kirk Varnedoe, Chief Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, the ARTIST'S CHOICE series invites artists to create an exhibition from the Museum's collection according to a personally chosen theme or principle. "I wanted, for myself, to explore what being a woman in the art world has meant," Murray writes in the exhibition brochure. "I wanted to weave together a sense of the genuine and profound contribution women's work has made to the art of our time." - more - 11 West 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019-5498 Tel: 212-708-9400 Fax: 212-708-9889 2 Installed in the Museum's third-floor contemporary painting and sculpture galleries, the exhibition is arranged in thematic groupings.
    [Show full text]
  • The Wandering Eye Works on Paper from the 60S and 70S Lee
    The Wandering Eye Works on Paper From the 60s and 70s Lee Bontecou, Jasper Johns, Yayoi Kusama, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Morris, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist April 10 – May 19, 2007 This exhibition of works represents the moment in post-war art when figuration begins to return after a long period of Abstract Expressionism. Works on paper seem to represent the starting point; the beginning of an idea, and similarly, collage, even as a finished work, has the feeling of a ‘scrapbook’ or record of different ideas coalescing. In some of the earliest drawings in the show, Stones Sketch for Us, 1957 by Larry Rivers and Sketch for ‘The Critic Smiles’, 1959 by Jasper Johns, the viewer is confronted with images that are physical and intimate. The figures in Stones Sketch for Us are dissected in a way that makes one aware of the body: sketches of hands with no arms, faces and necks with no bodies, and figures melding into one another forming one ‘self’. In Johns’s Sketch for ‘The Critic Smiles’, a toothbrush that replaces bristles with human teeth is represented, once again bringing to mind the physicality of the body and the intimate act of grooming one’s self. Lee Bontecou’s Untitled, 1972-73 confronts the viewer directly with eyes peering out of a machine-like face. The segmented composition is unsettling; the main components of a human face and neck are present, but the figure itself is not entirely ‘human’. In collages by Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Self-Portrait for Dwan Gallery poster), 1965, and Larry Rivers, Untitled, 1963, the figure is prominent, yet, the works incorporate many other elements, particularly through the artists use of disparate and multilayered materials.
    [Show full text]
  • Oral History Interview with Lee Bontecou, 2009 January 10
    Oral history interview with Lee Bontecou, 2009 January 10 Funding for this interview provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Lee Bontecou on January 10, 2009. The interview took place at Knoedler and Company in New York, N.Y, and was conducted by Dore Ashton for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Funding for this interview was provided by a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. Lee Bontecou and Dore Ashton have reviewed the transcript and have made corrections and emendations. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview DORE ASHTON: Let's start at the beginning, and get the documentary stuff out of the way, is that okay? LEE BONTECOU: Yes. MS. ASHTON: For instance, you were born where? MS. BONTECOU: In Rhode Island [January 15, 1931]. MS. ASHTON: And you grew up there – MS. BONTECOU: Providence, Rhode Island. MS. ASHTON: Providence? MS. BONTECOU: Yes. MS. ASHTON: And did you go to grammar school there? MS. BONTECOU: No. MS. ASHTON: No? MS. BONTECOU: I was a kid. I was a baby. So – MS. ASHTON: Where did they take you? MS. BONTECOU: I have to think.
    [Show full text]
  • Moma HOSTS FINAL U.S. PRESENTATION of LEE BONTECOU RETROSPECTIVE, FEATURING RECENT WORKS EXHIBITED for FIRST TIME
    MoMA HOSTS FINAL U.S. PRESENTATION OF LEE BONTECOU RETROSPECTIVE, FEATURING RECENT WORKS EXHIBITED FOR FIRST TIME Last Exhibition at MoMA QNS Presents Four Decades of Sculptures and Drawings by Lee Bontecou Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective July 30—September 27, 2004 MoMA QNS, The Museum of Modern Art, Queens NEW YORK, July 2004—The Museum of Modern Art presents Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective, the most comprehensive exhibition ever assembled of the work of Lee Bontecou (American, b. 1931). The artist received early acclaim for her meticulously handcrafted wall reliefs of welded steel and canvas, which blurred the distinctions between painting and sculpture. These celebrated early works are shown alongside her more recent porcelain and wire sculptures. Evocative of celestial and natural forms, these later works are exhibited for the first time in this retrospective. The exhibition is organized by Elizabeth A. T. Smith, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in association with Ann Philbin, Director, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and is coordinated for The Museum of Modern Art by Lilian Tone, Assistant Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture. It will be on view at MoMA QNS, its final venue, from July 30 to September 27, 2004, after its showing at the organizing institutions in Los Angeles and Chicago. The exhibition features 53 sculptures and 52 drawings from private and public collections as well as from the artist’s own holdings. It documents the complexity and scope of Bontecou’s art from the late 1950s through 2000, and includes many works from the past 30 years that have rarely or never before been publicly shown.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report 2004
    mma BOARD OF TRUSTEES Richard C. Hedreen (as of 30 September 2004) Eric H. Holder Jr. Victoria P. Sant Raymond J. Horowitz Chairman Robert J. Hurst Earl A. Powell III Alberto Ibarguen Robert F. Erburu Betsy K. Karel Julian Ganz, Jr. Lmda H. Kaufman David 0. Maxwell James V. Kimsey John C. Fontaine Mark J. Kington Robert L. Kirk Leonard A. Lauder & Alexander M. Laughlin Robert F. Erburu Victoria P. Sant Victoria P. Sant Joyce Menschel Chairman President Chairman Harvey S. Shipley Miller John W. Snow Secretary of the Treasury John G. Pappajohn Robert F. Erburu Sally Engelhard Pingree Julian Ganz, Jr. Diana Prince David 0. Maxwell Mitchell P. Rales John C. Fontaine Catherine B. Reynolds KW,< Sharon Percy Rockefeller Robert M. Rosenthal B. Francis Saul II if Robert F. Erburu Thomas A. Saunders III Julian Ganz, Jr. David 0. Maxwell Chairman I Albert H. Small John W. Snow Secretary of the Treasury James S. Smith Julian Ganz, Jr. Michelle Smith Ruth Carter Stevenson David 0. Maxwell Roselyne C. Swig Victoria P. Sant Luther M. Stovall John C. Fontaine Joseph G. Tompkins Ladislaus von Hoffmann John C. Whitehead Ruth Carter Stevenson IJohn Wilmerding John C. Fontaine J William H. Rehnquist Alexander M. Laughlin Dian Woodner ,id Chief Justice of the Robert H. Smith ,w United States Victoria P. Sant John C. Fontaine President Chair Earl A. Powell III Frederick W. Beinecke Director Heidi L. Berry Alan Shestack W. Russell G. Byers Jr. Deputy Director Elizabeth Cropper Melvin S. Cohen Dean, Center for Advanced Edwin L. Cox Colin L. Powell John W.
    [Show full text]
  • The Encrypted Object: the Secret World of Sixties Sculpture
    Title Page The Encrypted Object: The Secret World of Sixties Sculpture Joanne Louise Applin University College London PhD nL ABSTRACT This thesis examines the work of artists Lucas Samaras,Lee Bontecou and HC Westermann, specifically the way in which they have been excluded from dominant accounts of 1960s sculptural practice. I explore the ways in which a theory of 'secrecy' provides a framework through which to think about each of these artists. Chapter one focuses on Samaras's use of small-scale boxes in relation to his dialogue with the Minimal cubic structure, whilst the second chapter examines the structures of Bontecou in terms of their 'secrecy'. Working from welded steel armatures, Bontecou developed a unique practice of stretching dirty, worn skeins of fabric over the metal structure, always with a gaping hole backed with black felt, a disturbing void (MA around which the surface is organised and the spectatorial encounter disturbed. Unlike the voracious mode of looking Bontecou's works engender, or the partial, fragmented 'peering' offered by Samaras's boxes, Westermann's works require a type of looking that has more in common with the physical act of 'drifting'. I cast both the viewing experience and the mode of construction Westermann's works demand, in terms of 'bricolage' and 'braconnage' (or 'poaching). The concluding chapter analyses the role of the artistic homage and notion of influence, taking as model the work of psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok on haunting and secrecy in relation to the work of Westermann alongside that of Bruce Nauman and Rachel Whiteread. In chapter four I introduce the idea of the 'phantom, as a way of thinking through the problems of inheritance at work in the artistic homage in terms of a series of ruptures, using Abraham and Toroks' concept of the 'transgenerational phantom', in which familial secretsare unwittingly inherited by one's ancestors.
    [Show full text]
  • Moma Judd PREVIEW.Pdf
    JUDD EDITED BY ANN TEMKIN With contributions by Erica Cooke, Tamar Margalit, Christine Mehring, James Meyer, Annie Ochmanek, Yasmil Raymond, Ann Temkin, and Jeffrey Weiss THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK CONTENTS 8 FOREWORD Glenn D. Lowry 10 INTRODUCTION: THE ORIGINALITY OF DONALD JUDD Ann Temkin 16–57 PLATES 58 “THE STUDENT OF PAINTING” Erica Cooke 78 HOW JUDD BECAME JUDD James Meyer 92–149 PLATES 150 BERNSTEIN BROTHERS SHEET METAL SPECIALTIES, INC. Annie Ochmanek 170 JUDD AND THE MUSEUM Ann Temkin 188 SENSE OF SITE Jeffrey Weiss 206–51 PLATES 252 ON THE JUDD SCALE: . FURNITURE, ARCHITECTURE . Christine Mehring 272 SWISS MADE: JUDD’S LATE WORK Yasmil Raymond 286 AROUND THE STUDIO: IN CONVERSATION WITH DUDLEY DEL BALSO, JAMIE DEARING, AND ELLIE MEYER Tamar Margalit 295 Exhibition Checklist 298 Acknowledgments 304 Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art Hyundai Card is proud to support this long-awaited retro- spective of the work of Donald Judd, whose revolutionary ideas transformed the language of modern art. Judd’s radical approach to form, materials, working methods, and display established him as one of the pivotal figures of the twentieth century. Bringing together a selection of Judd’s objects, paint- ings, prints, and drawings, the exhibition explores the artist’s provocative use of industrial materials and his bold investigation of form and space. Judd broke open the boundaries of tradi- tional approaches to painting and sculpture through a remark- able spirit of creativity and innovation—values that Hyundai The Henry Luce Foundation seeks to enrich public discourse Card always seeks to pursue.
    [Show full text]
  • 3-40Pp Columns
    LEE BONTECOU AND DRAWING FROM THE REAL TO THE STRANGE By Mona Hadler strange naturalist” is what one critic called Lee those works, it remains to this day a key practice of hers in its “ Bontecou, and indeed she is just that, a strange own right, and one that privileges the inner eye. naturalist in the age of technology and mass “Black” started it all: “Getting the black ... opened A 1 culture. The “natural world with its visual wonders and everything up.... It was like dealing with the outer limits ... horrors” and the province of “man-made devices with their with a square of black on the soot.... I can push it.... I had to mind-boggling engineering feats and destructive find a way of harnessing it.” 7 In these oft-quoted words, abominations” are one to her. 2 Combining the natural and the Bontecou describes the excitement she felt when she began in artificial, she has produced a cabinet of wonders replete with the late 1950s to produce drawings with black soot by turning frightening creatures and suspended cosmologies. Her the oxygen down on an acetylene torch (1958; Fig. 1). She visionary imagination dominates, above all, in her vast two- stretched paper on the studio wall and worked on a large dim ensional oeuvre, where the real commingles freely with the scale, moving quickly, and, with agility and bodily fantastic. The deep blacks in these works produce cosmic holes, floating eyes, gas masks, and bleak terrains populated by frankenflowers and cyborgian creatures that break boundaries between humans, animals, plants, and machines.
    [Show full text]
  • Lee Bontecou, American, Born 1931 Untitled (A Study of Fish), Ca
    Lee Bontecou, American, born 1931 Untitled (a study of fish), ca. 1958 Charcoal and graphite on paper 25.4 × 33 cm (10 × 13 in.) Collection of the artist Bontecou’s early life studies reflect the instruction she received at the Art Students League in New York in the early 1950s. One of her first courses revolved around a methodology developed by the school’s former instructor Kimon Nicolaïdes. He believed that drawing requires "physical contact with all sorts of objects through the senses," and he encouraged students to look into the world, rather than to art history and art theory, for inspiration. Students were prompted to make "fresh" and "vivid" contact with actual objects through touch and smell. Bontecou’s drawings are emblematic of this directed and sensorial approach. Lee Bontecou, American, born 1931 Untitled (Ledger), ca. 1958–60 Clothbound with maroon spine and corners 26.7 × 21.3 cm (10 1/2 × 8 3/8 in.) Collection of the artist Bontecou used this found ledger, with accounting notations and calculations, as a sketchbook when she was living and working in lower Manhattan in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Nearly all of its 140 pages are filled with drawings, many of them serving as preparatory steps for her large-scale sculptures. Author Joan Banach has described the ledger as a "protean first monograph" and has discussed these "delicately and helically spiraled" drawings as anticipating "the invertebrate chambers of the marine and web-like forms in Bontecou’s work of the 1980s." Lee Bontecou, American, born 1931 Untitled (cricket), 1957 Graphite, ink, and wash on paper 21.3 × 45.4 cm (8 3/8 × 17 7/8 in.) Collection of the artist Lee Bontecou, American, born 1931 Untitled, ca.
    [Show full text]
  • Minimalism 1 Minimalism
    Minimalism 1 Minimalism Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post–World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include Donald Judd, John McLaughlin, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella. It is rooted in the reductive aspects of Modernism, and is often interpreted as a reaction against Abstract expressionism and a bridge to Postmodern art practices. The terms have expanded to encompass a movement in music which features repetition and iteration, as in the compositions of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Minimalist compositions are sometimes known as systems music. (See also Postminimalism). The term "minimalist" is often applied colloquially to designate anything which is spare or stripped to its essentials. It has also been used to describe the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett, the films of Robert Bresson, the stories of Raymond Carver, and even the automobile designs of Colin Chapman. The word was first used in English in the early 20th century to describe the Mensheviks.[1] Minimalist design The term minimalism is also used to describe a trend in design and architecture where in the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. Minimalist design has been highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture. In addition, the work of De Stijl artists is a major source of reference for this kind of work.
    [Show full text]
  • Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1959, Canvas and Metal, Overall: 20/2 X 2O'y;6 X 7I4 In
    Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1959, canvas and metal, overall: 20/2 x 2o'y;6 x 7I4 in. (52.1 x 52.9 x 18.4 cm). Smith Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, purchased with a gift from the Chace Foundation (artwork © Lee Bontecou; photo- graph provided by Smith Museum of Art) In 1958 Lee Bontecou began experimenting with a technique for making sculp- ture based on binding fabric to thin steel frames or armatures. Executed first on a small scale that oscillated between the form of the model and the form of table- top sculpture, the works were emphatic in their distance from the shape and tenor of the dominant field of welded metal sculpture. These initial ambiguities were retained, exaggerated even, as their scale changed. The better-known results of Bontecou's experimentation, her wall reliefs from the early 1960s, were seen as hybrid, unfixed, and fascinating. One early relief dated 195-9 and Elyse Speaks included in the Duke University exhibition Women in Contemporar)'Art in 1963, was described in that exhibition catalogue: "Her construc- The Terms of Craft and tions in canvas and metal, intricately sewed and tied together, swell outward from the wall in heavy forms that build into space. Here Other Means of Making: painting and sculpture meet; canvas becomes form; painting becomes structure." ' The description highlights her methods of Lee Bontecou*s Hybrid making and seizes on the composite nature of the form—one in process between the pictorial two-dimensionality of painting and Trajectory the material three-dimensionality of sculpture. Several of Bontecou's earliest reliefs were based on a bisected structure that encouraged the suggestions of transformation, process, and dyna- mism.
    [Show full text]