Poet, printmaker, author, and painter Anne Ryan is often associated with the early generation of New York abstraction. In 1941, Ryan joined Atelier 17, a famous printmaking workshop originally established by Stanley William Hayter in France in the 1930s and transferred to New York after the Second World War. It wasn’t until 1948, when Ryan was 58 years old, that she began working in her signature medium of collage.
It is said to have been an exhibition of the work of Kurt Schwitters that inspired Ryan’s shift in medium. Her early implementation of connotative found materials, such as postage stamps and photos, led to her use of rice papers and cloth. Paper and fabric are both employed in Ryan’s collage Untitled (Whites with Greens) (1952). This work falls in line with Ryan’s signature formal geometry and diminutive scale. The scraps of paper and cloth are interspersed in a way that resembles a quilt, with the words wash and able the only legible text in the work.
Ryan’s historical association with the New York School comes from a perceived investment in form and materiality, though her work’s particular evocation of domesticity, craft, and female labor places Ryan within a long lineage of feminist art practice. Though Ryan took up her preferred medium late in life, she managed to complete some four hundred collaged works between 1948 and her death in 1954.
Anne Ryan Biography
Anne Ryan (b. 1889, Hoboken, NJ; d. 1954, Morristown, NJ) began her only formal art training at Stanley William Hayter’s famous printmaking workshop Atelier 17, New York (1941). Her first solo painting exhibition was at the Pinacotheca Gallery, New York (1941), followed by other one-woman shows including at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York (1950, 1954, 1955, 1970); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1979); the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (1979); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1980); and Washburn Gallery, New York (1985, 1989, 1991, 1998, 2008). A retrospective of her work was held at the Susan Teller Gallery (2007). Ryan’s work may be found in numerous public collections such as: the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Maddie Phinney Biography
Maddie Phinney is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She received her MA from the University at Buffalo, New York (2014) and is currently Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Visual Studies. Her work centers on the art of identity and its critical reception, with particular attention paid to the politics of the AIDS epidemic in the US. Her writing has appeared in artcritical, V Magazine, Bomb, Nukta Art and others.
Ed Ruscha began his commentary on language as a system in the early 1960s, most often exploiting the connotative power of a single word as a means of commenting on the contingent relationship of form to content. Later in the 1970s, Ruscha began employing evocative phrases and sentences to point to cultural conventions, myths, or ideologies. Ruscha’s use of language is often analyzed in terms of the direct and immediately comprehensible imagery of Pop. Yet it is through the shifting interrelationship between form and content—between what is said and implied—that the artist examines the political power of language. Self (1967) is Ruscha’s earliest drawing in the exhibition, and it provides a useful point of departure in examining the power of the linguistic to evoke the relationship between individual and group identity.
In 1960s America, language began to re-enter the vocabulary of American artists, supplanting High Modernism’s four-decade promotion of abstraction. Pop is frequently theorized as an ironic response to Abstract Expressionism, which insisted on the autonomy of the image as evidence of the artist’s singular encounter with his materials.1 Pop images, when placed in dialogue with text, instead pointed to interpretative frames as referential and contingent, indicating our own deep engagement with popular culture. With Self, Ruscha enlists the political potential of Pop to speak to the constructedness of individual identity. By rendering the word Self in script, Ruscha gestures toward the autographic: the stable “truth” of the self as understood by High Modernism becomes a mere citation, a word, necessarily different in its shadings to anyone who reads it. By rendering the text in reserve and giving it the illusion of three-dimensionality, Ruscha turns this word into a scroll to be written on: the self as a screen. The drawing is part of Ruscha’s gunpowder series, which the artist began in the 1960s because he found graphite and charcoal lacking in their evocative potential. In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Ruscha raises questions of individual responsibility for violence by illustrating the self with the materials of combat. In Self, text becomes image and image becomes text, allowing the word to act both as a physical object and as a conveyor of meaning.
1. Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” Tradition of the New, originally in Art News 51/8, December 1952: 22.
Ed Ruscha Biography
Edward Ruscha (b. 1937, Omaha, NE) studied at the Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles (1960). He has received grants and fellowships from the National Council on the Arts (1967); the National Endowment for the Arts (1969, 1978); the Tamarind Lithography Workshop (1969); and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1971). Ruscha has been awarded the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Award in Graphics (1974); the Achievement in Printmaking Award from the Graphic Arts Council, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1988); and the Achievement in Visual Arts Award from the California Arts Council (1995). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2001) and was the United States representative at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005). A major exhibition of Ruscha’s work was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004) and traveled to The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. A retrospective of his work took place at the Hayward Gallery, London (2009) and traveled to Haus der Kunst, Munich, and to Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Other recent solo and group exhibitions have been held at Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm (2010); Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2010); the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2011); Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, California (2011); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2011); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2012); Peter Lund Gallery, Los Angeles (2012); Gagosian Gallery, New York (2012, 2014); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California (2012) and traveled to the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2012); Brandhorst Museum, Munich, Germany (2013); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2013); and The Getty Center, Los Angeles (2013). Ruscha lives and works in Los Angeles. More information about his work can be found at www.edruscha.com.
Maddie Phinney Biography
Maddie Phinney is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She received her MA from the University at Buffalo, New York (2014) and is currently Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Visual Studies. Her work centers on the art of identity and its critical reception, with particular attention paid to the politics of the AIDS epidemic in the US. Her writing has appeared in artcritical, V Magazine, Bomb, Nukta Art and others.
References
Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” Tradition of the New, originally in Art News 51/8, December 1952: 22.
While studying music theory at Yale under composer Paul Hindemith, William Kent became interested in sculpting, painting, and carving marble and wood. In the 1960s, he began making prints using large-scale discarded slate blackboards, which he sandblasted or carefully carved to create elegant bas-reliefs. It was also at this time that Kent developed a unique method of making monoprints using fabric. Shortly thereafter, he began exhibiting in commercial galleries and museums in New York City, and was featured in the 1966 Whitney Annual alongside Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Helen Frankenthaler.
In 1961, Kent became the first curator for the John Slade Ely House, a non-profit arts center in New Haven, Connecticut, which he opened up to artists year-round. However, Kent’s 1965 exhibition Sex and Violence, Or Erotic and Patriotic Prints created a scandal with the Ely House’s conservative trustees, and Kent was fired that same year. He retreated to a converted farmhouse in the small town of Durham, Connecticut, where he focused on printing until 1977, when he began sculpting wood exclusively.
Take It Easy But Take It! (1964) is characteristic of Kent’s slate prints on rice paper. According to William Bendig of the Hollycroft Foundation, the text and title were most likely inspired by the Woody Guthrie song “Takin’ It Easy,” and the image appears to have been taken from an Athenian kylix by Makron. A maenad carries a thyrsus, a sort of magic wand, and embraces a satyr in an aggressive and erotic exchange. Kent often took from various sources to craft his evocative images, and this particular image of ancient Greek hedonism was a favorite of the artist’s.
William Kent Biography
William Kent (b. 1919, Kansas City, MO) received his BS from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and served in the United States Navy. He attended the Yale University School of Music, New Haven, Connecticut (1944-1947) and studied Music Theory and Composition with Paul Hindemith. The artist served as Curator of the John Slade Ely House Art Center, New Haven (1960-65) and as Founder and Secretary of Professional Artists of Connecticut (1962-1965). Kent received the Award for Artistic Excellence from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven (2009). Recent solo exhibitions were held at The York Square Gallery, New Haven (2000); Chase/Freedman Gallery, West Hartford, Connecticut (2003); Evergreen Woods, Branford, Connecticut (2005); Kehler Liddell Gallery, New Haven (2009); and the Museum of Sex, New York (2013). Recent group exhibitions took place at the Detroit Institute of Fine Arts, Michigan (2000); The Sculpture Mile, Madison, Connecticut (2001, 2005); the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2004); Mobile Alabama Museum (2005); Museum of Arts & Design, New York (2006); and the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, Connecticut (2008). Kent’s work is included in the following selected public collections: the Smithsonian Institution; Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester University; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts; DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park; the Brooklyn Museum; Princeton University Art Museum; New Britain Museum of American Art; and the Yale University Art Gallery. Prior to his death, Kent formed the William Kent Charitable Foundation. More information about his work and foundation can be found at http://williamkentfoundation.org/
Maddie Phinney Biography
Maddie Phinney is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She received her MA from the University at Buffalo, New York (2014) and is currently Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Visual Studies. Her work centers on the art of identity and its critical reception, with particular attention paid to the politics of the AIDS epidemic in the US. Her writing has appeared in artcritical, V Magazine, Bomb, Nukta Art and others.
Born Burgess Collins in Long Beach, California, the artist who chose to identify simply as Jess enrolled in the California School of the Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in 1949. In San Francisco, Jess met his lover and life partner, the poet Robert Duncan. The two artists helped to craft a buzzing, experimental post-war Bay Area art scene, forming the influential King Ubu Gallery with painter Harry Jacobus in 1952. Later reconceived as Six Gallery, the space was a central intersection for Beat art and poetry in the 1950s. It was here, in 1955, that Allen Ginsberg first presented his poem Howl.
Jess is best known for his intricate collages, which incorporate themes of mysticism, chemistry, seduction, and aesthetics. Open-Mouthed but Relaxed (1952) is one of the artist’s earliest collaged works. The evocative word Beauty dominates the frame. Central to Jess’s project was the subjective role of the viewer in drawing associations between words and images, allowing the work to speak multiply at a social-historical moment when categories were typically understood as fixed. Clichéd phrases such as if it’s unexpected, expect it are pulled from advertising and pasted alongside works of poetry and the words real, Zen, stop, and go. The provocative title has a sexual undertone but could easily have been taken from a work of literature or poetry; media such as these formed the majority of Jess’s source material.
Jess’s The Truth and Life of Myth (1969) was originally intended as the cover of the 1973 paperback edition of Duncan’s autobiography by the same title, first published as a clothbound volume in 1968. Jess’s collage was not ultimately used for the project and wasn’t published until 1986, when it appeared as the frontispiece to Robert J. Bertholf’s Robert Duncan: A Descriptive Bibliography. The juxtaposition of mythology, religion, and spirituality is typical of Jess’s imagery, and the intricate composition evidences his artistic maturity. A significant figure in the exhibition, Jess evidences through his work the important link between visual art and poetry in 1960s America.
Jess Biography
Jess (b. 1923, Long Beach, CA; d. 2004, San Francisco, CA) received his BS from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena (1948). During World War II, he served in the United States Army at the Atomic Energy Laboratory, and held a small role in the production of plutonium for the Manhattan Project. Jess soon abandoned his scientific career due to a nightmare about nuclear holocaust, and attended what is now called the San Francisco Art Institute, California (1949). Along with his longtime partner, poet Robert Duncan, Jess became a key member of the 1950s Beat generation. Jess, Duncan, and painter Harry Jacobus opened the King Ubu Gallery (1952), renamed the Six Gallery by poet Jack Spicer, which became a significant venue for alternative art. Jess is best known for his “paste-ups,” i.e., elaborate collages composed of magazine, poster, and illustration clippings. Jess became publicly known after his work was included in influential museum exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1961, 1965) and at the Oakland Museum of Art, California (1963). His first notable retrospective opened at the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York (1993) and traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Other recent solo and retrospective exhibitions were held at Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco (2005, 2008), and at the San Jose Museum of Art, California (2007), which traveled to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin; the Pasadena Museum of California Art; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas, Austin; Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, Oregon; The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City; and the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida. His work is represented in numerous public collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois. The Jess Estate is represented by Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York.
Maddie Phinney Biography
Maddie Phinney is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She received her MA from the University at Buffalo, New York (2014) and is currently Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Visual Studies. Her work centers on the art of identity and its critical reception, with particular attention paid to the politics of the AIDS epidemic in the US. Her writing has appeared in artcritical, V Magazine, Bomb, Nukta Art and others.
Robert Indiana has described the 1960s as the most meaningful time of his life. His print portfolio Decade, published by Multiples, Inc., in 1971, commemorated this period with the reproduction of ten paintings made between 1960 and 1969. Included in this exhibition are two serigraphs from the portfolio, Mississippi and The American Dream. In the latter print, based on Indiana’s painting The American Dream I (1961), the artist employs his signature visual vernacular, which he honed over the early part of the 1960s. With its simple geometric configuration, stenciled letters, and flat, bright paint, the work resembles equally a series of fictionalized traffic signs and the hard-edge abstraction made popular by Indiana’s friend and lover Ellsworth Kelly. While Indiana’s work is often characterized in terms of the cool detachment of Pop, the content of American Dream holds personal significance for the artist. US Routes 29, 40, 37 (on which Indiana lived), and the famous 66 figure prominently. The word “tilt” is taken from the pinball games and jukeboxes Indiana encountered in roadside bars and cafes, while “take all” references the naturalized consumerism implicit in the American Dream.1 In this ode to Americana, Indiana speaks to individual nostalgia and to collective experience with his own visual vocabulary.
Following a number of separatist movements in the 1960s, the 1970s US saw coalitions of activists with diverse backgrounds working together with the common goal of social change. As a queer artist, Indiana drew a relationship between his own oppression and that of those struggling for civil rights. Mississippi, from Indiana’s 1965-66 Confederacy series, was produced as a response to the 1964 murder of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. A star on the city of Philadelphia, Mississippi, memorializes the disappearance of the three men, who, following a slew of national media attention, were found to have been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, with Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey and deputy sheriff Cecil Price charged as one of nine members and conspirators in their murder.
By 1971, Indiana’s iconography had become widely recognizable: bright, flat applications of stenciled uppercase letters, five-pointed stars, circles, squares, and diamonds. In the Confederacy series, including Mississippi, Indiana is verbally explicit about his political critique, incorporating the statement, “just as in the anatomy of man every nation must have its hind part.” Using impactful language—both visual and textual—to draw attention to prejudice, Indiana also draws a relationship between his personal struggle as a gay man and that of a larger community working toward social reform.
1. Robert Indiana, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Artist Questionnaire, December 1961, via http://robertindiana.com/works/letter-form-m/
Robert Indiana Biography
Robert Indiana (b. 1928, New Castle, IN) spent three years in the United States Air Force after attending Arsenal Technical High School, Indianapolis (19420-1946). He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois (1949-1953), was in residence at the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting, Madison, Maine (1953), and attended the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland (1953-1954). Two years after moving to New York, Indiana relocated to Coenties Slip, a port at the southeast tip of Manhattan, to join a community of artists including Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist and Jack Youngerman. Indiana’s work was first featured in influential group exhibitions in New York at the Martha Jackson Gallery (1960), at The Museum of Modern Art (1961), and at the Sidney Janis Gallery (1962). The first major acquisition of Indiana’s work was in 1961 by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Indiana’s first solo exhibition opened at Stable Gallery, New York (1962), and his work has since been the subject of one-man shows at over 30 galleries and museums worldwide, including most recently in his retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2013). He currently is represented by Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, and Galerie Gmruzynska, Switzerland. More information about his work may be found at http://robertindiana.com/.
Maddie Phinney Biography
Maddie Phinney is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She received her MA from the University at Buffalo, New York (2014) and is currently Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Visual Studies. Her work centers on the art of identity and its critical reception, with particular attention paid to the politics of the AIDS epidemic in the US. Her writing has appeared in artcritical, V Magazine, Bomb, Nukta Art and others.
References
Robert Indiana, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Artist Questionnaire, December 1961, via http://robertindiana.com/works/letter-form-m/
