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PRESSKIT FORREST BESS (February 15, 2020 – May 3, 2020)

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PRESSKIT FORREST BESS (February 15, 2020 – May 3, 2020) Kassel, February 13, 2020 PRESSKIT FORREST BESS (February 15, 2020 – May 3, 2020) 1. Press release and invitation 2. List of press images available for download 3. Exhibition booklet Forrest Bess 4. CV Forrest Bess 5. Exhibition program 6. FF – Live at the Fridericianum documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH Johanna Köhler, Head of Communication and Marketing Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel T +49 561 70727-2520 / [email protected] Kassel, February 13, 2020 PRESS RELEASE AND INVITATION Exhibition: Forrest Bess February 15 – May 3, 2020 Fridericianum, Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel, Germany Opening: Friday, February 14, 2020, 7 pm Press preview: Thursday, February 13, 2020, 11 am Speakers: Dr. Sabine Schormann, General Director of documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH Moritz Wesseler, Director of the Fridericianum The Fridericianum presents the first exhibition of the work of American painter Forrest Bess in Germany for over thirty years. The exhibition at the Fridericianum presents the remarkable and unusual work of Forrest Bess to a wider German audience for the first time since 1989. By featuring over seventy works from institutional and private collections, the artist’s development is mapped from his early conventional, figurative formulations through to his so-called “visionary” paintings—the biomorphic abstractions—that make up the main body of his work. Furthermore, by exhibiting selected correspondence and other archival material, Bess’s biography is carefully traced while at the same time providing a background to his art theoretical approaches, the handling of his homosexuality, and his theories of hermaphroditism. This insight into the life and work of an artist who has found a considerable following among contemporary artists, such as Tomma Abts, James Benning, Robert Gober, Richard Hawkins, Henrik Olesen, and Amy Sillman, strongly highlights Bess’s relevance to the present day. documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH Johanna Köhler, Head of Communication and Marketing Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel T +49 561 70727-2520 / [email protected] Forrest Bess: Life and Work The painter Forrest Bess, born in 1911 in Bay City, Texas, where he also died in 1977, is considered an outstanding yet little understood figure in American postwar art. Both his work and lifestyle conformed little to the conventions of the day. He thus led a rather secluded existence from the second half of the 1940s on the Gulf of Mexico where he worked as a catcher and seller of fish bait. During this time, Bess began to systematically produce small-format paintings which encapsulated “visions” that appeared to him on the threshold between waking and sleep. These works, which he exhibited fairly regularly from 1951, feature symbols, shapes, and spaces that are not clearly decipherable and which can be located in the field of biomorphic abstractions. For Bess, subconscious experiences and humanity’s collective memory manifested themselves in these pictorial worlds. Accordingly, he pursued the exploration of his visions like an intense piece of research. He studied texts on mythology, art history, psychology, and sexual science that he articulated in countless records and correspondence without ever unravelling the mystery of his creativity. Over time he came to the conclusion that he could attain immortality by uniting the male and the female. In the 1950s this belief ultimately led to personal medical interventions on his own genitals, through which he tried to become a pseudo-hermaphrodite. For Bess artistic work was closely related to life itself, which, conveyed with his intensity and specificity, can be seen as a feature distinguishing him from artists like Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, or Clyfford Still—who like him exhibited at the legendary Betty Parsons Gallery. However, it is not only from this perspective that we can discern a difference to these artists who are today considered the main exponents of Abstract Expressionism. The intimate format of Bess’s paintings is in direct contrast to the monumentality of his colleagues’ works. Furthermore, his work is neither marked by a recognizable style nor characterized by any form of stringent development. Even though Bess’s works, as abstractions, fit perfectly into the context of contemporary art history, his “visionary” pictures nevertheless tread their very own path. It is precisely this aspect that has played a considerable role in making him a point of reference for generations of subsequent artists. After his death Bess gained recognition in the form of various institutional solo exhibitions. Marking the start of this was a presentation at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1981, followed by a touring exhibition in 1988 to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the San José Museum of Art in San José, concluding at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 1989. This was followed in 2013–14 by the exhibition Seeing Things Invisible which toured to the Menil Collection in Houston, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, as well as the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. Together with Robert Gober’s initiated juxtaposition of Bess’s writings and works in the context of the Whitney Biennial 2012, the tour formed a high point in the - 2 - reception of this visionary painter. The exhibition at the Fridericianum follows on from these shows and, for the first time since 1989, updates the reception of Forrest Bess’s work in the German context. The exhibition is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Image material for download available here: https://fridericianum.org/press/ - 3 - Service information Fridericianum Friedrichsplatz 18 34117 Kassel T +49 561 70727-20 [email protected] www.fridericianum.org Opening hours Tue–Sun & public holidays 11 am–6 pm Admission fee 6 Euro, reduced 4 Euro Wednesday free admission Free admission for children and under 18s Groups (10 or more) 4 Euro per person Free admission for students with a Kulturticket Students and trainees 2 Euro Free admission for school groups Press contact documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH Head of Communication and Marketing Johanna Köhler +49 561 70727-2520 [email protected] - 4 - Kassel, February 13, 2020 ÜBERSICHT BILDMATERIAL ZUM DOWNLOAD / LIST OF PRESS IMAGES AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD 1. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Forrest Bess: Untitled (No. 5), 1949 © The artist and Collection Mickey Cartin 2. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Forrest Bess: Untitled (#6), 1957 © The artist. Privatsammlung / Private collection, Courtesy Modern Art, London Foto / Photo: Robert Glowacki documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH Johanna Köhler, Head of Communication and Marketing Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel T +49 561 70727-2520 / [email protected] 3. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Forrest Bess: Untitled (#11), 1957 © The artist. Privatsammlung / Private collection, Courtesy Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York Foto / Photo: Kent Pell 4. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Forrest Bess: Untitled (No. 13), 1950 © The artist. Privatsammlung / Private collection, New York Foto / Photo: Stewart Clements 5. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Forrest Bess: Here Is a Sign, 1970 © Courtesy of The Museum of Everything - 2 - 6. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Forrest Bess: Untitled (The Spider), 1970 © The artist. Collection Christian Zacharias, Courtesy Modern Art, London Foto / Photo: Robert Glowacki 7. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Forrest Bess: No. 6, 1959 © The artist. Privatsammlung / Private collection, New York Foto / Photo: Stewart Clements 8. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Forrest Bess: Untitled (No. 7), 1957 © The artist. Collection Christian Zacharias, Courtesy Modern Art, London Foto / Photo: Robert Glowacki - 3 - 9. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Forrest Bess: Untitled (No. 31), 1951 © The artist. Courtesy Andrew Masullo Foto / Photo: Wilfred J. Jones 10. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Richard Hawkins: Proposal for a monument, 2019 © Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York Foto / Photo: Marten Elde 11. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: James Benning: After Bess, 2014 © James Benning. Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin 12. Bildnachweis / Image Credit: Foto von / Photo of Forrest Bess, 1956 © Kirk Hopper - 4 - FORREST BESS Deutsch Einleitung 4 Forrest Bess 6 Die Gemälde 8 Die These 9 English Introduction 12 Forrest Bess 14 The Paintings 15 The Thesis 16 Impressum / Imprint 19 2 3 Einleitung Dabei dürfte gerade die Betrachtung von Leben und Werk verdeutlichen, welche Relevanz Bess für die Gegenwart hat. Letzteres manifestiert Der Maler Forrest Bess, 1911 in Bay City, Texas, geboren und 1977 sich nicht zuletzt auch in der starken Rezeption seines Wirkens durch ebendort verstorben, gilt als herausragende, aber ebenso schwer zu zeitgenössische Künstler*innen wie Tomma Abts, James Benning, greifende Persönlichkeit der amerikanischen Nachkriegskunst. Diese Robert Gober, Richard Hawkins, Henrik Olesen oder Amy Sillman, Einschätzung lässt sich sowohl durch die Wesenszüge seines Werkes als was wiederum Thema einer eigenen Ausstellung sein könnte. Die auch durch die besonderen Umstände seines Lebens begründen, da beides Präsentation in Kassel soll hingegen jene Persönlichkeit ins Bewusstsein nur bedingt den damaligen Konventionen entsprach. So führte er ab der rücken, die gegen Ende der 1940er-Jahre an den prominenten zweiten Hälfte der 1940er-Jahre ein recht isoliertes Leben am Golf von Kunsthistoriker Meyer Schapiro schrieb:
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