NEW YORK, NY November 9, 2019 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum announces upcoming exhibitions for the month of December.
The Fullness of Color: 1960s Painting
December 18, 2019–August 2020
Tower Gallery 5
The title of this exhibition was inspired by Systemic Painting, the 1966 Guggenheim exhibition where curator Lawrence Alloway pointed to the emergence of an artistic style that “combined economy of form and neatness of surface with fullness of color.” The Fullness of Color presents artists whose style embodied Alloway’s description. Helen Frankenthaler had pioneered in 1952 the “soak stain” technique, whereby she manipulated thinned acrylic washes into the unprimed cotton fabric of the canvas to
produce rich, saturated surfaces. Those who followed over the next decade similarly handled paint as a dye that penetrates the fibers of the canvas rather than as a topical layer brushed over it. Morris Louis and Jules Olitski poured, soaked, or sprayed the paint onto canvases, thus eliminating the gestural stroke that had been central to Abstract Expressionism. Figure and ground became one and the same, united through color. Painters in the 1960s likewise approached relationships between form and color
through geometric languages, as shown in works by Kenneth Noland and Paul Feeley.
The Fullness of Color is a reflection of the Guggenheim’s historical engagement with this period, highlighting the varied and complex course abstraction followed in the twentieth century through examples of works now characterized as Color Field, geometric abstraction, hard-edge, or systemic painting. This presentation is organized by Megan Fontanella, Curator, Modern Art and Provenance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Marking Time: Process in Minimal Abstraction
December 18, 2019–July 2020
Tower Gallery 7
During the 1960s and 70s, many artists working with abstraction turned toward minimal approaches. As some of them pared compositional, chromatic, and virtuosic flourishes from their work, a singular emphasis on their physical engagement with materials emerged. The pieces they created—whether characterized by interlocking brush strokes, a pencil moved through wet paint, or a pin repeatedly pushed through paper—call on viewers to imaginatively reenact aspects of the creative process. It is a distinctly empathetic mode of engagement that relies on an awareness of one’s own body, as inhabited and inhabiting time, and, perhaps even more important, a consciousness of the embodied experiences of others. Featuring an international array of paintings and works on paper by Agnes Martin, Roman Opałka, Park Seo-bo, and others, this presentation selected from the Guggenheim Museum’s collection explores this tendency, while considering its rise in multiple milieus and how artists used it to
individualized ends. This exhibition is organized by David Horowitz, Assistant Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
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