Peter Halley Paintings of the 1980s The Catalogue Raisonné Cara Jordan Table of Contents Introduction 4 Cara Jordan Facts Are Useless in Emergencies 6 Paul Pieroni Guide to the Catalogue Raisonné 11 Catalogue Raisonné Peter Halley in front of his first New York studio at 128 East 7th Street, 1985 1980 13 1981 23 1982 37 1983 47 1984 59 1985 67 1986 93 1987 125 1988 147 1989 167 Appendix Biography 187 Solo Exhibitions 1980–1989 188 Group Exhibitions 1980–1989 190 Introduction Cara Jordan The publication of this catalogue raisonné of Peter Halley’s through a diagrammatic representation of space. His paintings French Post-Structuralist theorists such as Michel Foucault and and SCHAUWERK Sindelfingen; and the numerous galleries paintings from the 1980s offers a significant opportunity to reflect transformed the paradigmatic square of abstract art into refer- Jean Baudrillard to the North American art world—emphatically and art dealers who have supported Halley’s work throughout on the early works and career of one of the most well-known en tial icons that he labeled “prisons” and “cells,” and linked them refuted the traditional humanist and spiritual aspirations of art.1 the years, including Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Galerie artists of the Neo-Conceptualist generation. It was during these by means of straight lines he called “conduits.” Through this His writings described the shifting relationship between the Bruno Bischofberger, Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Greene Naftali years that Halley developed the hallmark iconography and formal simple icono graphy, which remains the basis of Halley’s visual individual and larger social structures triggered by technology Gallery, Margo Leavin Gallery, Galería Javier López & Fer language of his paintings, which connected the tradition of language, he created a compartmentalized space connected by and the digital revolution, leading critic Paul Taylor to name Francés, Maruani Mercier Gallery, and Sonnabend Gallery. 20th-century abstract art to the geometrization of contemporary predetermined pathways—a space that enabled him to address him in 1986 the “intellectual” of the Neo-Conceptualist group.2 I would also like to extend my gratitude to Pepe Karmel, social space. Throughout this decade Halley was also active issues of human isolation and connection. who served as an advisor on this project. as a writer, composing a series of influential essays adressing In 1981 Halley began to use fluorescent paint, whose eerie After Halley’s rapid rise in the mid-1980s, more exhibitions in Additionally, this publication could not have been these same concerns. glow echoes the quality of artificial light, and Roll-a-Tex, an ersatz Europe and the United States followed, including his first completed without the support of Peter’s studio assistants stucco additive used to create the “popcorn” wall treatment museum survey, Peter Halley: Recent Paintings at the Museum during these years: Lauren Clay, Scott Dixon, Greg Funk, Halley spent his childhood and formative years in New York, where ubiquitous to the walls of low-priced condos and other suburban Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany, in 1989. In 1991, the CAPC- Stephanie Gonzalez-Turner, Leslie Hatten, Emma Howcroft, he was born in 1953. Following his education at Phillips Academy interiors of the time. musée d’Art contemporain, Bordeaux, initiated an extensive Nicole Maloof, Leigh Mozes, and Melissa Sachs. This book in Andover, Massachusetts, Halley entered Yale University (where Halley began exhibiting his work soon after his return to survey of Halley’s work, which subsequently traveled to honors the memory of my colleague and ardent Halley he later served as the Director of Graduate Studies in Painting New York, starting with solo shows at PS122 Gallery in December Amsterdam, Madrid, and Lausanne. In recent years, his paintings supporter, curator Amy Brandt, whose friendship we both and Printmaking from 2002 to 2011) with the intention of studying 1980, and at Beulah Land, an East Village bar, in January 1984. from the 1980s have been featured in several notable exhibitions: cherish in memory. studio art. After two unsatisfying years at Yale, Halley moved Around this time, he met curators such as Bob Nickas, Dan Early Work: 1982 to 1987 at Mary Boone Gallery in New York to New Orleans for a year off. When he went back to Yale to finish Cameron, and the curatorial team Tricia Collins and Richard and Peter Halley: Cells and Conduits (Paintings 1987–2002) at his degree, he was denied entry into the studio art program, and Milazzo, and became involved in the vibrant artistic scene that El Sourdog Hex in Berlin, both in 2009; Works from the 80s instead majored in art history, graduating in 1975. He then moved developed around the artist-run galleries in the East Village. at Galerie Andrea Caratsch in Zurich in 2010; and Peter Halley, again to New Orleans, where in 1978 he completed his MFA In 1985, Halley had his first one-person exhibition at International Paintings from the 1980s at Stuart Shave/Modern Art in London in painting at the newly established graduate art program of the with Monument, a gallery run by three young artists: Meyer in 2017. University of New Orleans. Vaisman, Kent Klamen, and Elizabeth Koury. Soon thereafter, A number of artists, curators, critics, art historians, and In 1980 Halley returned to New York, moving into a loft at in October 1986, Vaisman organized a much-discussed group collectors have been instrumental to Halley’s work. Many of 128 East 7th Street in the East Village. Almost immediately, his show at Sonnabend Gallery in New York, featuring works these figures have been kind enough to support the realization work reflected the intensity and scale of the city’s infrastructure. by Halley, Ashley Bickerton, Jeff Koons, and Vaisman himself. of this catalogue raisonné. On behalf of the artist and myself, Fascinated by the three-dimensional grid of streets, subways, This exhibition caused a sensation among critics, putting the I would like to thank Richard Milazzo, who has remained Halley’s and elevators, Halley became interested in the predominance four artists on the art world’s radar under the labels “Neo-Geo” longtime friend, publisher, and curator of his work since the of geometry in urban space and its relationship with abstract art. and “Neo- Conceptualism.” 1980s; the many private collectors, foundations, and museums 1 See Peter Halley, Selected Essays 1981–2001, Edgewise He began to connect the hermetic language of geometric During this time, Halley also wrote a series of essays that who have provided us with information about works including Press, New York 2013. abstraction—borrowed from Kazimir Malevich, Josef Albers, is considered an important contribution to the critical discourse the Broad Foundation, the Daros Collection, Ute and Reinhard 2 Paul Taylor, “The Hot Four,” New York Magazine, Barnett Newman, and others—to the landscape of the city of the era. His essays—which were instrumental in introducing 4 5 Onnasch, Michael and B.Z. Schwartz, the Rubell Family Collection, October 27, 1986, p. 55. Jails Peter Fend becomes a friend, as does critic and essayist Facts Are Useless in Emergencies Jonathan Crary. Halley also begins to actively participate in I lived in a building on 7th Street. On the ground floor a bi-weekly discussion group for artists and critics. Above all, Paul Pieroni* on the street there used to be a bar or a pub that had he begins publishing his writings, with his first major theoretical a stucco facade and windows with bars over them. text, which we have already touched upon, appearing in the I began to do the jail paintings, paintings of prison-type May edition of Arts magazine. facades. I was out in front of my building waiting for a friend one day and realized that I had, in fact, been Reflecting upon this period of New York cultural life, literary using this image which I had never consciously noticed critic and cultural theorist Sylvère Lotringer writes that, while before—it was completely subconscious in origin.12 at the end of the 1970s New York “was still a dump, a pothole,” with everybody still “bracing for survival,” the city was also In “The Crisis of Geometry” (1984) Halley seeks to understand “cheap, fluid, wide open.” He continues: the changing nature of the geometric in culture. Drawing from 20th-century modern art, he admonishes Constructivism and Artists were living as a kind of tribe. They were white, Neo-Plasticism for their essentialization of geometry (geometry smart, and “pure,” professionally poor. There was a sense as nature), while also chiding Minimalism for its treatment that they were in it together, participating in a privileged of geometry as symbolically neutral (lacking signifying function). experience. Dwelling in cavernous downtown lofts, In opposition to both, Halley executes a structural analysis they made art that wasn’t meant to sell. (They talked of the geometric, proposing that while “once” the geometric about money all the time because they didn’t have any.)17 “provided a sign of stability, order, and proportion, today it offers an array of shifting signifiers and images of confinement and Immersion in this social milieu continues to register in Halley’s deterrence.”13 Halley turns to Michel Foucault’s Discipline and painting. “Vital fluids”—another Halleyian neologism—begin Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) to underline this point. to flow in and out of the jails through the conduits (which are Foucault contended that industrial-era urban space has been positioned “underground” (below) the cells, occupying smaller, carefully designed to exert sinister control over its population adjoining canvases bolted to the base of the main, jail containing, via partitioning and differentiation.14 The geometric order of canvas). The effect is transformative, vitalizing.