Four Must-See Prints Shows in New York Right Now
Print Week might be officially over but there is still a terrific number of print-centric exhibitions on view in both commercial galleries and the city’s larger institutions. Our New York City correspondent Anni Irish is back to share four favorites.
Roy Lichtenstein, Entablature VIII, 1976. Embossed screenprint and collage: sheet, 29 1/8 × 44 7/8 in. (74 × 114 cm); image, 21 13/16 × 38 in. (55.4 × 96.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Roy Lichtenstein Study Collection, gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation 2019.141. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
Order and Ornament: Roy Lichtenstein’s Entablatures at the Whitney
This presentation marks the first exhibition at the Whitney Museum devoted to Lichtenstein’s work since the recent gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Study Collection. While modest in scale (the exhibition focuses on just 15 works on paper), Order and Ornament: Roy Lichtenstein’s Entablatures offers a very focused look at the artist’s larger conceptual issues of architecture, imperial power, appropriation, and reproduction. Encompassing drawings, foil stamped screenprints and offset lithographs, the pieces presented in the show were inspired by a style of molded architectural forms known as entablatures. Inspired by Classical Roman and Green architecture but mass produced using repeatable molds, Lichtenstein encountered many of these façades on buildings around Lower Manhattan and on Wall Street. A grouping of the artist’s photographs documenting these architectural details are included, sketch books offering a rare glimpse into his artistic practice are presented along with the original stencils that were used in the production of the final works.
Order and Ornament: Roy Lichtenstein’s Entablatures is on view at the Whitney Museum until January 2020.
Installation view of the exhibition "John Baldessari: Prints" at Brooke Alexander Inc.
Image courtesy of the artist and Brooke Alexander Inc.
John Baldessari Prints at Brooke Alexander, Inc
Currently on view at Brooke Alexander in SoHo is a series of print works by the iconic artist John Baldessari. Known for combining photography, painting, and text Baldessari became an early pioneer of image appropriation in the mid-1960 and began incoprating printmaking into his practice in the early 1970s.
In an era before Instagram and memes, Baldessari saw the potential in visual mashups and creative juxtaposition. Whether he is obscuring images with screenprinted overlays or creating narrative through the unexpected wall arrangements of his framed pieces, Baldessari remains intent on forcing viewers to question their typical consumption of images. This latest exhibition of his work feels incredibly timely and proves an ongoing relevance for Baldessari as his work continues to defy expectations and challenge the definitions of print, photography and other artistic genres. This show was curated by Owen Houhoulis and the featured works are currently in a book published by Brooke Alexander Edition.
John Baldessari at Brook Alexander, Inc is on view until November 2.
Installation view of the exhibition "Betye Saar: The Legends of Black Girl’s Window"
October 21, 2019 - January 4, 2020. IN2428.1. Photograph by Heidi Bohnenkamp. Image courtesy of Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Betye Saar The Legend of a Black Girl's Window at MoMA
With the recent reopening of MoMa this week, the museum has received a lot of attention with its $400 million expansion. The public were welcomed in on Monday with massive crowds flowing through. More than 40,000 square feet of gallery space have been added as a result of the revamp, allowing for the exhibition of more work as well as new public performance and education spaces, an expansion of the bookstore, as well as new street-level galleries making art accessible to the masses. One major highlight of their new programming is the show tilted, The Legend of a Black Girl's Window.
This latest exhibition featuring the work of superstar printmaker Betye Saar is helping to bring the MoMA into the 21st century by acknowledging the importance of WoC artists while situating her among her contemporary artistic peers. Known for her layered and rich surfaces that straddle the line between prints and assemblages, Saar was a leader within the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s. Over the years Saar’s work has sought to reclaim black feminism and the black female body and has situated historically racially charged images such as Aunt Jemima, Mammy, and others by reapportioning them in a new, contemporary way and in turn seeking to ascribe new meaning.
This exhibit traces Saar's transition from creating traditional prints to forming more complex, spatial assemblages. With over 42 works that the museum recently acquired, this is the first show that takes a comprehensive look at Saar's contribution to the field of printmaking and the impact she has made. Many of the pieces on display in Legend of a Black Girl's Window are works on paper that tackle topics such as family, mysticism, identity, and more.
The Legend of a Black Girl's Window is on view at the MoMA until January 4, 2020.
Vija Celmins Selected Prints at Senior and Shopmaker Gallery
Latvian artist Vija Celmins' is currently enjoying an enormous amount of exposure; a large retrospective is currently on view at the Met Breuer (having traveled from SFMoMA) as well as smaller print-focused shows on view at both Matthew Marks Gallery and Senior and Shopmaker Gallery.
In her presentation with Senior and Shopmaker, Celmins' ongoing engagement with photorealism and processes of printmaking is traced from 1982 to 2016. This show is a larger look at Celmins' exploration of natural spaces and looks specifically at her work dealing with the ocean, the night sky, spider webs and more which is all in line with the artist's signature style.
Her meticulously rendered recreations of these natural spaces, tread the line between imagination and reality and through rendering similar scenes in a variety of mediums, she leaves the viewer with a deeper appreciation of line, form and the atomically small fragments that make up the world in which we dwell.
Vija Celmins at Senior and Shopmaker Gallery is on view until November 2.