Richard Artschwager
Encyclopedia
Richard Artschwager is an American
painter, illustrator and sculptor, born in 1923 in Washington, D.C.
. Artschwager is best known for his stylistic independence; although he has associations with the Pop Art
movement, Conceptual art
and Minimalism
.
, who suffered greatly from tuberculosis
. His mother, was a Jewish Ukrainian. It is from his mother that Artschwager received his love of art. In 1935, the family moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico
because of the deteriorating health of his father. At that time, Artschwager was already showing a knack for drawing.
In 1941, Artschwager entered Cornell University
, where he studied chemistry and mathematics. In the fall of 1944, he was sent to England and France to fight in World War II
, as part of his military service. Wounded in the head, he was assigned administrative duty in Frankfurt
, then an intelligence posting in Vienna
. It was there that he met his wife, Elfriede Wejmelka. The two married in 1946 and returned to the United States in 1947. Artschwager then returned to college and, in February 1948, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts
in physics.
Artschwager, however, couldn't deny his first passion and was encouraged into the arts by his wife. After he received his diploma, the couple moved to New York, where he worked as a baby photographer and his wife worked as a designer.
In 1949, Artschwager began to study with Amédée Ozenfant
in Paris
. Ozenfant was a purist painter, who placed precision and rationality above all else. In the early 1950s, Artschwager abandoned art for work, particularly as a turner
and a bank employee. In 1953, he began to sell furniture, to ensure regular income, after the birth of his daughter. In 1956, he designed and manufactured simple and modern furniture. He was quite successful until 1958, when a fire destroyed his entire studio and all its contents. He then contracted a large loan to restore his business.
reigned supreme. He enrolled in a nude workshop and painted in abstract easel format, derived from landscape painting. His paintings and drawings from this period were exhibited in two group shows at the Terrain Gallery
in 1957 and in October 1959 at the Art Directions Gallery on Madison Avenue, where they were recognized by Donald Judd.
In 1960, Artschwager received a commission from the Catholic Church to design functional objects like altars for boats that went beyond utilitarianism
. This work lead him to think of a mode of artistic expression more consistent with his identity as a craftsman. During this period, he built a series of small wall objects in wood and formica
.
In 1961, he takes a snapshot of a dustbin. The quadrille photo was implemented and expanded on the canvas. Shortly after, seeing a painting by Franz Kline
, Artswager discovered celotex as a medium to enhance the load gesture. In 1962, he directed his first combination work, using painting and celotex sculpture (Portrait Portrait I and II).
At the end of 1963, Artschwager was very productive. Chair, a substitute geometric version, is a work very representative of this period, with the red formica used to mimic the back rest.
In the mid-'60s, Artschwager made small framed objects from formica. He sought to incorporate, for the first time, human presence into his sculptures. His paintings on celotex during this period show essentially opposite characters. His diptychs show his first attempt to incorporate space in the table. From 1964, his paintings depict images of the environment, carefully framed with formica. He met Ivan Karp and Castelli
, two gallery owners who appreciated his work and exhibited it in group exhibitions during the Spring and Autumn of 1964.
In 1966, he inaugurated a series using mottled brown formica, a series that was the subject of his second solo exhibit at Castelli in late 1967. His original works of furniture was becoming more advanced, especially through his wall pieces. At the same time, he continued to produce many abstract paintings, which used spatial concerns marbled wall furniture. He drew a series of landscapes, which he used to prepare an exhibit commissioned by the University of California
in the Spring of 1968. He used them in four basic forms of wood painted nois, as space punctuation: the birth of BLPs, enlargements of punctuation marks that embody the artist's growing taste for linguistic references. The BLPs were the sole subject of his first solo exhibit in Europe Aat the Konrad Fischer gallery in Düsseldorf
in 1968.
At the end of 1968, he participated in the annual exhibit of sculpture at the Whitney Museum of American Art
. It put BLPs in a hundred different places in the museum, which drew attention to the architecture of [Marcel Breuer|Breuer] and the works exhibited. They were used to publicly questionined the institutional context of art.
In 1970, he participated in the group exhibit Information at Museum of Modern Art.
During the years 1971, 1972 and 1973, he explored the theme very bourgeois interiors, which gave him a sense of stability while working on other paintings, during this time of instability. Artschwager included the dissolution of any visual design on 6 celotex paintings, which depicted the explosive demolition of Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City using photographic reporting.
In 1974, he developed classic architectural motifs, a compromise between the stillness of the interiors and the ongoing disintegration of destruction. The subject here is light, its ability to guide the eye, the movement's vision and the constant movement and fluid look. A series of imaginary drawings, representing all six items combined (a door, a window, a table, a basket, mirror, rug), uses inversions of scale, imaginative combinations and locations. This reflection on the spaces capable of containing all six, which is also a question about the context, causes them to turn again to the BLPs.
The next five years, his production is essentially three dimensional. He added to his works very large BLPs.
In the 1980s, there was preponderance of the mirror as object-own furniture to accommodate the reflections, possibly combined with other materials like celotex painted wood, and formica.
In 1984 and 1985, he used painted wood and remained very active. This design occupies a central place in his creative process.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
painter, illustrator and sculptor, born in 1923 in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. Artschwager is best known for his stylistic independence; although he has associations with the Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
movement, Conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
and Minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
.
Early Life and Art
Richard Artschwager was born to European immigrant parents. His father, Ernst Artschwager, was a Protestant born in PrussiaPrussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
, who suffered greatly from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. His mother, was a Jewish Ukrainian. It is from his mother that Artschwager received his love of art. In 1935, the family moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Las Cruces, also known as "The City of the Crosses", is the county seat of Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 97,618 in 2010 according to the 2010 Census, making it the second largest city in the state....
because of the deteriorating health of his father. At that time, Artschwager was already showing a knack for drawing.
In 1941, Artschwager entered Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, where he studied chemistry and mathematics. In the fall of 1944, he was sent to England and France to fight in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, as part of his military service. Wounded in the head, he was assigned administrative duty in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, then an intelligence posting in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. It was there that he met his wife, Elfriede Wejmelka. The two married in 1946 and returned to the United States in 1947. Artschwager then returned to college and, in February 1948, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in physics.
Artschwager, however, couldn't deny his first passion and was encouraged into the arts by his wife. After he received his diploma, the couple moved to New York, where he worked as a baby photographer and his wife worked as a designer.
In 1949, Artschwager began to study with Amédée Ozenfant
Amédée Ozenfant
Amédée Ozenfant was a French cubist painter.He was born into a bourgeois family in Saint-Quentin, Aisne and was educated at Dominican colleges in Saint-Sébastien...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Ozenfant was a purist painter, who placed precision and rationality above all else. In the early 1950s, Artschwager abandoned art for work, particularly as a turner
Turning
Turning is the process whereby a single point cutting tool is parallel to the surface. It can be done manually, in a traditional form of lathe, which frequently requires continuous supervision by the operator, or by using a computer controlled and automated lathe which does not. This type of...
and a bank employee. In 1953, he began to sell furniture, to ensure regular income, after the birth of his daughter. In 1956, he designed and manufactured simple and modern furniture. He was quite successful until 1958, when a fire destroyed his entire studio and all its contents. He then contracted a large loan to restore his business.
Return to Art
While he was working to support his family, Artschwager continued to think about art. This was during a time when abstract expressionismAbstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
reigned supreme. He enrolled in a nude workshop and painted in abstract easel format, derived from landscape painting. His paintings and drawings from this period were exhibited in two group shows at the Terrain Gallery
Terrain Gallery
The Terrain Gallery, or the Terrain, is an art gallery and educational center in SoHo, New York City. It was founded in 1955 with a philosophic basis: the ideas of Aesthetic Realism and the Siegel Theory of Opposites, developed by American poet and educator Eli Siegel...
in 1957 and in October 1959 at the Art Directions Gallery on Madison Avenue, where they were recognized by Donald Judd.
In 1960, Artschwager received a commission from the Catholic Church to design functional objects like altars for boats that went beyond utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
. This work lead him to think of a mode of artistic expression more consistent with his identity as a craftsman. During this period, he built a series of small wall objects in wood and formica
Formica (plastic)
Formica is a brand of composite materials manufactured by the Formica Corporation now based in Newcastle, Tyne & Wear, a division of the New Zealand company Fletcher Building. In common use, the term refers to the company's classic product, a heat-resistant, wipe-clean, plastic laminate of paper or...
.
In 1961, he takes a snapshot of a dustbin. The quadrille photo was implemented and expanded on the canvas. Shortly after, seeing a painting by Franz Kline
Franz Kline
Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
, Artswager discovered celotex as a medium to enhance the load gesture. In 1962, he directed his first combination work, using painting and celotex sculpture (Portrait Portrait I and II).
At the end of 1963, Artschwager was very productive. Chair, a substitute geometric version, is a work very representative of this period, with the red formica used to mimic the back rest.
In the mid-'60s, Artschwager made small framed objects from formica. He sought to incorporate, for the first time, human presence into his sculptures. His paintings on celotex during this period show essentially opposite characters. His diptychs show his first attempt to incorporate space in the table. From 1964, his paintings depict images of the environment, carefully framed with formica. He met Ivan Karp and Castelli
Leo Castelli
Leo Castelli was an American art dealer. He was best known to the public as an art dealer whose gallery showcased cutting edge Contemporary art for five decades...
, two gallery owners who appreciated his work and exhibited it in group exhibitions during the Spring and Autumn of 1964.
First Exhibits
In January 1965, Artschwager finally had his first solo exhibit at Castelli. He explored the problems of perception of space, a more elaborate construction and decoration. He also worked with portable altars. In 1965, the keyboard he had played since his childhood, appeared in his work as an installation format architecture. Artschwager's efforts to animate the space became increasingly sophisticated. He exploited the traditional functions and duties of furniture in space. Throughout the 1960s, he produced many figurative paintings from photographs. He integrated time and movement in his paintings and then process perspective as a convention to create the illusion of space.In 1966, he inaugurated a series using mottled brown formica, a series that was the subject of his second solo exhibit at Castelli in late 1967. His original works of furniture was becoming more advanced, especially through his wall pieces. At the same time, he continued to produce many abstract paintings, which used spatial concerns marbled wall furniture. He drew a series of landscapes, which he used to prepare an exhibit commissioned by the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
in the Spring of 1968. He used them in four basic forms of wood painted nois, as space punctuation: the birth of BLPs, enlargements of punctuation marks that embody the artist's growing taste for linguistic references. The BLPs were the sole subject of his first solo exhibit in Europe Aat the Konrad Fischer gallery in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
in 1968.
At the end of 1968, he participated in the annual exhibit of sculpture at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
. It put BLPs in a hundred different places in the museum, which drew attention to the architecture of [Marcel Breuer|Breuer] and the works exhibited. They were used to publicly questionined the institutional context of art.
In 1970, he participated in the group exhibit Information at Museum of Modern Art.
Architectural Works
In the 1970s, Artschwager begins to work on architectural motifs. During the first half of the decade, he employed two processes - fragmentation and expansion. His theme was domestic interiors. He also included associations of various styles of furniture, gradually moving away from the rudimentary nature of them.During the years 1971, 1972 and 1973, he explored the theme very bourgeois interiors, which gave him a sense of stability while working on other paintings, during this time of instability. Artschwager included the dissolution of any visual design on 6 celotex paintings, which depicted the explosive demolition of Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City using photographic reporting.
In 1974, he developed classic architectural motifs, a compromise between the stillness of the interiors and the ongoing disintegration of destruction. The subject here is light, its ability to guide the eye, the movement's vision and the constant movement and fluid look. A series of imaginary drawings, representing all six items combined (a door, a window, a table, a basket, mirror, rug), uses inversions of scale, imaginative combinations and locations. This reflection on the spaces capable of containing all six, which is also a question about the context, causes them to turn again to the BLPs.
The next five years, his production is essentially three dimensional. He added to his works very large BLPs.
In the 1980s, there was preponderance of the mirror as object-own furniture to accommodate the reflections, possibly combined with other materials like celotex painted wood, and formica.
In 1984 and 1985, he used painted wood and remained very active. This design occupies a central place in his creative process.
External links
- Richard Artschwager at David Nolan Gallery
- Richard Artschwager at Brooke Alexander Gallery
- Richard Artschwager at Xavier HufkensXavier HufkensXavier Hufkens is a European gallery owner and dealer in contemporary art. Since its founding in 1987, his gallery has been committed to the long term representation of established, mid-career and emerging artists. The gallery deals in a combination of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography,...
, Brussels - Richard Artschwager at Sprüth Magers Berlin LondonSprüth Magers Berlin LondonSprüth Magers is a commerical art gallery owned by Monika Spüth and Philomene Magers, with spaces in London and Berlin, representing such artists including Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Andreas Gursky, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman and Rosemarie Trockel...