Louisa Chase Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné
Ongoing collections and archival research, collaborator interviews, and documentation of the graphic work of Louisa Chase.
Kamikaze Curiosity: Louisa Chase Prints
The Palitz Gallery, New York, NY
October 23, 2019 – January 20, 2020
The prints of Louisa Chase (Syracuse University ’73) offer an insightful map to an extraordinary career; a satellite view of an enduring artistic expedition. She was one of few female artists to gain notoriety during the resurgence of painting in the 1980s, often associated with New Image painting and Neo Expressionist [NeoX] movements alongside Elisabeth Murray and Susan Rothenberg. Her work in print represents a lifelong exploration of innovation and experimentation, and the selected works illustrate the evolution of Chase’s distinct visual vocabulary, giving insight into this lifelong exploration, as she described, as a ‘kamikaze curiosity.’
This exhibition is evidence of that methodology: a survey encapsulating almost 40 years of creative pursuit, pushing the envelope of aged processes. The sequential progression of her visual vocabulary is summarized, and articulated, within the impressions on view: her figurative NeoX compositions, conveyed with comic (not to be confused as ‘funny’), simplified style; as in 1983’s Chasm and Thicket, giving way to the aggressive, abstracted gestural sensibility seen in Spook (1986) and the array of the untitled compositions of the late 1980s. And then, as if mining through her landscape of expressive mark-making, excavated compositions the representational imagery emerge once again, as seen in the emblematic Trying to Remember Your Face (1996) and Five Fears (2000).
Below the Surface: Louisa Chase
Parrish Art Museum, Watermill, NY
October 2018 – October 2019
Louisa Chase: Below the Surface is the first survey of the artist’s work since her death, representing nearly forty years of art-making. Early paintings illustrate the foundation of Chase’s visual vocabulary, seen in the simplified imagery and mark-making consistent throughout her career. The feeling of innocence imbuing her work from the 70s and early 80s gradually evolves into the aggressive excavation of her canvases. The resulting impasto offers a picture plane that has no perspective but is in no way flat. This sense of duality is central to Chase’s work: the balance between order and chaos, the dichotomy of image and intent, the unified expression of the divided self. She comes full circle within her most recent work, returning to the impish color palette and demeanor of her early painting but incorporating the assertive and introspective mark refined over a lifetime—what she defined as “kamikaze curiosity.” Louisa Chase routinely returned to the medium of printmaking throughout her career, publishing well over 60 editioned prints and countless variations, proofs, and monoprints. The selected prints on view mirror the stylistic evolution evident in her paintings and drawings, transitioning from the simplified forms of her early woodcuts, to the complex strata in her combined etching and relief impressions, and finally, to the sophisticated and self-reflexive compositions seen in her lithographs and monoprints.
Goudy @ Syracuse: A Legacy by Design
Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY. August 2017 – May 2018
Goudy @ Syracuse: A Legacy by Design tells the story of Frederic W. Goudy and his connection to Syracuse University. Through a selection of rare books, printed ephemera, and archival materials, original sketches, markups, and digital renderings from Jenkins and Beirut that showcase Goudy’s ongoing collaboration with Syracuse University, this exhibition explores not only the impact and importance of the famed type designer, but also celebrates the strong historical ties and entwined legacy of Goudy and Syracuse University.
Politics on Paper: Art with Agenda from the Syracuse University Art Collection
January 8 – March 28, 2019, Hoyt Art Center, New Castle, PA
February 2 – April 7, 2018, Las Cruces Museum of Art, Las Cruces, NM
September 26 – October 22, 2017, Tyler Art Gallery, SUNY Oswego, NY
August 18 – September 18, 2016, SUArt Galleries, Syracuse NY
For centuries, art has been used as a vehicle to inform the public, to illustrate a point of view, and to incite change. The introduction of printmaking, and later photography, played a significant role in politics due to the ease in which multiples could be produced and distributed to the general public. The new exhibit, Politics on Paper: Art with an Agenda from the Syracuse University Art Collection, examines the relationship between art and politics over time, using several examples of drawings, prints, and photos to advocate for a social purpose or cause.
Trigger Points
Co-curated with Heather Galbraith, Massey University, New Zealand
May 18 – June 30, 2016, The Palitz Gallery, New York, NY
Trigger Points draws together contemporary and historical works from New Zealand, the United States, Australia, Finland and the United Kingdom to explore the potent and slippery nature of memory. It examines the way memories are triggered by sensory stimuli, haptic encounters and visceral prompts, and how episodes, actions or encounters are felt physically and emotionally as well as understood rationally.
Painting in Clay: The Fired Landscapes of Margie Hughto
November 23, 2015 – February 4, 2016, The Palitz Gallery, New York, NY
Painting in Clay presents a succinct retrospective of Margie Hughto’s body of work, the first overview of her career since 1991. This small selection of artwork in no way adequately illustrates the entirety of her commissions, public installations, included collections and conceptual works, but effectively represents well over 30 years of art making, incorporating the artist’s multiple facets, major themes, and important projects that have defined her work and established her legacy in contemporary ceramic art. Hughto’s work can be categorized within three core structures: the environmental, the archeological, and the painterly abstract. Her forty-plus years of art making has seen shifts between these three classifications: sometimes the work is more painterly, directly referencing Abstract Expressionist artists; and other times heavily referencing an unearthed culture, as if the work was a modular sample from an archaeologist’s dig site. Many times these concepts are overlapping into another, especially when Hughto engages with the landscape. In any of Margie’s pieces, one if not all three of these base elements are present and central to the artist’s work.
View the exhibition catalog here.
The New Humanists: Introspective Impressions from the Syracuse University Art Collection
January 21 – March 27, 2016, J Wayne Stark Galleries, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
August 20 – October 4, 2015, SUArt Galleries, Syracuse NY
The New Humanists examines the swell of post-World War II visual artists making work rooted in the psychological state of humanity: through introspection, observation and reflection. Heavily influenced by German Expressionism, Surrealism, and the Social Realism of the 1930s, these artists sought to elicit the viewer with an emotional response- to question how we see ourselves and the world around us. Included in the exhibition is the work of Leonard Baskin, Robert Marx, Mauricio Lasansky, Nancy Grossman, Jacob Landau, Don Cortese, Jack Levine, Fredrico Castellón and José Luis Cuevas.
The Shadow of Industry: The Prints of Carol Wax
February 5, 2015 – March 15, 2015, SUArt Galleries, Syracuse NY
This exhibition examines over 30 years of prints by internationally recognized artist and print historian Carol Wax. She has become well known for her use and study of the mezzotint technique, and the selected prints explore her fascination with mechanization, drawing, and the historic reproductive medium. Wax’s imagery is inspired by commonplace objects that she endows with sentient personality or having mystical characteristics, especially vintage appliances or devices with organic forms that are exaggerated to evoke fantastic creatures or monuments. Typewriters, film projectors, the cogs and gears that signify the industrial age take on new meaning in stunningly soulful portraits of the once cutting edge. Or, in the same way seventeenth-century Dutch still-lifes allegorically symbolized the impermanence of life and beauty, Wax renders outdated machinery as icons representing the transient nature of technology and consumer trends, contemplating how perceptions of objects–much like her medium of choice–evolve from state of the art to antique; from utility to art.
Making Their Mark: The Rise of the American Print Workshop
February 5, 2015 – May 10, 2015, SUArt Galleries, Syracuse NY
In 1957 Russian emigree Tatyana Grosman longed to bring the European traditions of the livres d’artiste (the artist’s book) to the United States. She would establish Universal Limited Art Editions in West Islip, Long Island, becoming a vanguard of printmaking in America. ULAE has published the work of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Helen Frankenthaler, and dozens of other artists that read as a veritable who’s who of American art.
Like Grosman, artist June Wayne was frustrated at the lack of facilities in the United States for artists to collaborate with master printers. Wayne established the Tamarind School of Lithography in 1960. Together with artist Clinton Adams and master printmaker Garo Antresian, Tamarind would become the foremost center for lithography in the United States, collaborating with artists including Sam Francis, Joseph Albers, Louise Nevelson and Karl Schrag.
Kathan Brown also found inspiration in the European print tradition. Brown studied etching in London at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and established Crown Point Press, known for their progressive work with the intaglio processes. Richard Deibenkorn, Vito Acconcci and Sol LeWitt are but a few of the artists who have collaborated with Brown at Crown Point Press.
Thanks to the diligence of these women, the American print renaissance blossomed. The establishment of these workshops has solidified the relevance of the print in contemporary art by fostering a collaborative relationship between artist and master printer, unveiling new possibilities and experimentation in the process of our most regarded contemporary artists.
View from the Shore: Winslow Homer’s Impressions of the Coast
October 15 – December 17, 2021. The Mitchell Gallery, St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD
June 6 – August 15, 2014, Arkell Museum, Canojaharie, NY
Winslow Homer’s interest in describing the sea began well before his now famous marine paintings of the later 19th century. He discovered Gloucester and Cape Ann after the Civil War and made a series of images for the popular press describing the area’s inhabitants and its natural beauty. The 35 images include early illustrations for periodicals including Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper and Harper’s Weekly, as well as rare lithographs and large etchings made after Homer’s paintings. The exhibition defines Homer’s transition from an illustrator of the pre- and post war years through his travels abroad that mark his evolution to the pre-eminent American painter of the late 19th century.
Print Making Revolution: Mexican Prints and the Taller de Grafica Popular
November 7, 2013 – January 12, 2014, SUArt Galleries, Syracuse NY
The art of the print has long been intertwined with political commentary and social reform. From the etchings of the brutality witnessed during the Thirty Years War in 17th century France by Jacques Callot, to the biting commentaries on the upper class and aristocracy by William Hogarth and Honoré Daumier, the graphic arts have played a vital role as a voice for the under-represented and the anti-establishment.
Such was the case in early 20th-century Mexico. The combination of an unstable central government struggling to rebuild after more than a decade of revolution, the ongoing threat of international turmoil, and an under-educated and poor working class spurred the formation of numerous socially and artistically motivated organizations that aimed to force change by reaching the people through literature, music, and the visual arts. A distinct style of image-making centered on a very strong sense of national identity and the revolutionary cause quickly became the identifying characteristics of this new Mexican art.
Print Making Revolution explores the vivid, active role that the art of the print played in Mexico’s artistic character, specifically the work produced at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People’s Graphic Workshop), or TGP. Founded by a collective of artists with as much political zeal as passion for art-making, the TGP advanced a variety of revolutionary ideals and liberal causes, including the formation of organized labor, the fight for civil rights, and an active campaign against illiteracy.
While many cultures can identify specific artistic trends and a visual identity, it is rare that a nation’s distinct aesthetic develops as quickly as that of Mexico in the early 20th century. Printmaking’s role in developing this uniquely identifiable vision is as impressive and inseparable as the imagery and style that define Mexican art. Print Making Revolution presents the seminal printmakers and their prints that played a vital role in this artistic transformation.
Pressing Print: Universal Limited Art Editions 2000–2010
February 2 – March 18, 2012, SUArt Galleries, Syracuse NY
May 17 – August 4, 2013, Foosaner Art Museum, Melbourne, FL
September 13 – December 8, 2013, Thorne – Sagendorph Art Gallery, Keene State College Keene, NH
Pressing Print: Universal Limited Art Editions 2000-2010 chronicles the recent decade of artwork published by the renowned American printmaking workshop Universal Limited Art Editions [ULAE]. For over 50 years, artists have been invited to work with the ULAE Master Printers to publish unique prints. Founded by Tatyana Grosman in 1957, ULAE has evolved from its humble beginnings in a Long Island cottage using on old lithography stones found in the front yard, to becoming a vanguard of contemporary print, incorporating digital printing and experimental media.
Pressing Print celebrates Universal’s success and longevity, as seen through the works published since 2000 by both veteran artists who have worked with ULAE since its beginning, to emerging printmakers at the start of their relationship with ULAE. Many of the artists that Tatyana Grosman first approached to publish work with ULAE have now become 20th-century masters of American Art and continue to make work there: Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg began their long careers in print at Universal in 1960, and persuaded (among others) James Rosenquist to enlist in 1972. Helen Frankenthaler made her first prints at ULAE in 1961, and continued to publish 27 editions.
Upon the death of Mrs. Grosman in 1982, Master Printer Bill Goldston took over as Director and invited a new crop of artists to collaborate at the shop. These included Carroll Dunham, Terry Winters, Susan Rothenberg and Elisabeth Murray. In the 1990s Kiki Smith, Jane Hammond, Julian Lethbridge and Richard Tuttle were added to the roster. Today the collaboration continues with emerging artists like Enrique Chagoya, Tam Van Tran, Zachary Wollard and Amy Cutler who bring a fresh perspective and contemporary ideas about making prints.
While the exhibition does serve as a contemporary retrospective, Pressing Print is more than just a survey of artwork published since 2000. It is a specific examination of ULAE’s ongoing commitment to innovative approaches and techniques in contemporary printmaking. For instance, pigmented ink-jet printing and dimensional construction are featured alongside, and many times in addition to, traditional printmaking techniques. Under the direction of Bill Goldston, experimentation is embraced in the printshop at ULAE- allowing the artists and printers total freedom to fully realize their work.
These prints are pressing in that they are the most recent work published by some of the preeminent artists of the 20th century. With the inclusion of new and innovative technologies, part of the process is truly pressing print. Ultimately, the 52 works in the exhibition exemplify why Universal Limited Art Editions has been, and continues to be, a transformative force in contemporary art.
AMOS KENNEDY PRINTS!
February 16 – April 2, 2011, Community Folk Art Center, Syracuse, NY
Winslow Homer and the American Pictorial Press
September 5 – November 30, 2014, Museum of the South West, Midland, TX
March 1 – May 7, 2014, Daura Gallery, Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA
September 12, 2013 – January 5, 2014, Fort Smith Regional Art Museum, Fort Smith, AZ
November 9 – December 6, 2009, Palitz Gallery, New York, NY
August 18 – October 11, 2009, SUArt Galleries, Syracuse NY