PREVIEW: Richard Artschwager
One of the most important artists to emerge during the twentieth century, Artschwager’s playful and diverse oeuvre has influenced generations of younger artists by challenging assumptions about perception and the aesthetic, material and spatial experience of art and the everyday. Spanning over forty years, Artschwager’s practice explored the mediums of sculpture, painting and drawing in order to understand the relationship between art and objects, and the environment they inhabit.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Archive
Richard Artschwager forged a unique path in art from the early 1950s through the early 21st century, making the visual comprehension of space and the everyday objects that occupy it strangely unfamiliar. His work has been variously described as Pop art, because of its derivation from utilitarian objects and incorporation of commercial and industrial materials; as Minimal art, because of its geometric forms and solid presence; and as conceptual art, because of its cool and cerebral detachment. A selection of paintings, sculptures, and drawings by Richard Artschwager is on show in Basel. Artschwager specialized in crossing boundaries between genres and mediums, revealing the deception involved in pictorial illusion and communicating the essential strangeness of everyday objects and spaces. His work foregrounds the structures of human perception, often conflating the worlds of flat images and three-dimensional objects in witty and confounding ways. Artschwager made extensive use of synthetic materials, especially Formica and Celotex, a highly textured compound board. The exhibition features several paintings on Celotex, including two titled “Weaving” (1969) that focus on the details of a fabric surface; “Untitled” (1992), an exterior view of a suburban house; and “The Kitchen” (1971), a depiction of the titular room. Also included is “T.W.M.D.R.B.” (1987), a view of six objects (the titular table, window, mirror, door, rug, and basket). All these works reflect Artschwager’s longstanding interest in domesticity and infuse a deadpan, documentary approach with a surreal effect, as if their subjects were being observed at a physical and cultural distance. Artschwager derived these images, as he often did, from newspaper photographs, employing a grid system to enlarge them from their sources and enhance blurred details. Artschwager’s emphatic sculpture “Exclamation Point” (Yellow) (2001) occupies one corner of the gallery, while two chairs, both made in 1990 from red oak, Formica, cowhide, and painted steel, bracket the exhibition and provide visitors with relaxed vantage points from which to view the other work. “blp”, a painted wood lozenge, is paired with “blp” (both 1967–2013), a similar shape spray-painted directly onto the gallery wall using a stencil. Artschwager conceived of these glyph- or logo-like works as abstract markers of human presence; they were also born out of, in his words, “an organized search for the cheapest, most accessible piece of art possible”. A selection of late-career pastel drawings depicts the landscape of New Mexico, where Artschwager spent his teenage years. The rough texture of the paper on which these strikingly colorful works are made recalls that of Celotex, though the works’ palette is far wider than his earlier output. Scenes such as “Road with Causeway” (2011) and “Landscape with Blue Mountains” (2009) have an open, cinematic feel, while still-life images such as “Watermelon on Green Paper” (2011) convey a disarming simplicity and directness.
Richard Artschwager was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in New Mexico, and studied chemistry and mathematics at Cornell University. Wounded while fighting in World War II, Artschwager worked as an administrator in Frankfort, and met his wife Elfriede Wejmelka on mission to Vienna. They returned to New York together, where she encouraged him to pursue his interest in his art. In 1949, he joined the studio of French cubist painter Amédée Ozenfant, but left the next year for a bank job due to financial reasons; his production throughout the 1950s was similarly interrupted, but, while employed, he was able to create a series of furniture. In the 1960s, Artschwager turned to sculpture, drawing attention to art’s illusionistic properties by painting over found wooden objects with artificial wood grains. He also began to paint naturalistic scenes of buildings, interiors, and figures in grisaille on celetox; these works grew increasingly abstract as Artschwager added illusionary elements that played with the viewer’s perception. Artschwager’s later paintings and sculptures incorporated increasingly diverse materials, such as wood, mirrors, and Formica, as he continued to explore domestic interiors and to push at the laws of perception.
Photo: Richard Artschwager, Exclamation Point (Yellow), 2001, Plastic bristles on a poplar core painted with latex, 65 x 22 x 22 in, 165.1 x 55.9 x 55.9 cm, Edition of 3, © 2022 The Estate of Richard Artschwager / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Rob McKeever, Courtesy Gagosian
Info: Gagosian Gallery, Rheinsprung 1, Basel, Switzerland, Duration: 1/9-15/10/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com/
