New York, NY (February 12, 2015)
From March 10 to September 20, 2015, the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) presents Richard Estes: Painting New York City, the first exhibition of the art of Richard Estes to focus on the artist’s technique and process, through an examination of his New York City paintings, prints, and photographs. Spanning from the mid-1960s to the present and featuring over forty paintings and works on paper, the exhibition is Estes’ first New York City museum survey. It is also the first solo painting show in the history of the Museum of Arts and Design.
“For the first painting exhibition in the museum’s history, we could not have picked a more apt and compelling subject," said Glenn Adamson, MAD's Nanette L. Laitman Director. "Estes is a paradigmatic example of a world-class artist who is also a consummate artisan. He uses his own extraordinary skill as a means to open up possibilities of form and content."
Richard Estes: Painting New York City provides an unprecedented view into the artist’s photo-derived creative process through numerous examples of his source photographs, along with silkscreens, woodcuts and their various proofs, as well as his art-making tools. The exhibition also offers a powerful portrait of New York City through the last five decades, one that defies topicality and affirms Estes as one of its most essential artists.
“Estes’ urban façades, streetscapes, and vistas of venerable or banal and usually passed-by buildings remain vibrant affirmations and celebrations of a thrilling, ever-evolving city,” notes exhibition curator Patterson Sims. “Over the last five decades, New York City has clearly captivated and recreated Richard Estes, just as he has become one of its grandest proponents and painters.“
A press preview for the exhibition will be held on Monday, March 9, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Exhibition curator Patterson Sims will lead a short tour of the exhibition.
Since the mid-1960s, Estes has made his art only from subjects and sites he has seen and photographed himself. His fastidious translations of those photographs unite a modern technology with the traditional pursuit of representational art. Yet, as precise as Estes’ paintings and prints may appear to be, they are built with subtle inventive transformations of his often multiple source photographs. In realizing his compositions, he deletes details and figures, shifts colors, and alters perspectives and vanishing points.
Estes’ views of the city celebrate formal structure and everyday reality, eschewing the quaint, the historic, and the anecdotal. As he has repeatedly asserted, his art is not so much about what he paints as about how he paints. Images of New York City, however, have always been central to his art and inevitably provide their own iconic power, recognizability, and narrative associations.
Richard Estes: Painting New York City features Estes’ recent series of night images, which augment the brightly sunlit and blue-skied views that have dominated his urban views. This nocturnal series exploits Estes' fascination with reflective surfaces and light, while pushing the limits of representation, as he complexly commingles reflections and reality, interior and exterior space, and close-ups of storefronts and panoramic vistas.
Along with Columbus Circle, images of Wall Street, the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges, Central Park, Madison Park, the Staten Island Ferry, and commercial storefronts are featured. Highlights from the exhibition include the following works:
About Richard Estes
Richard Estes (b. 1932) moved to New York City in 1958 from the Chicago area, where he was born, brought up, and educated. For most of his first decade in New York City, he supported himself as an illustrator and graphic designer for periodicals and advertising agencies. In early 1968, his painting career was launched with his first solo exhibit at the Allan Stone Gallery on East 86th Street in Manhattan. It was the first New York City exhibit of a painter from the group of American artists soon to be identified as Photorealists. Since that time, Estes has exhibited in a wide range of galleries and museums worldwide. His work can be found in public and private collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Neue Galerie der Stadt Aachen, Ludwig Collection, Aachen, Germany; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York. Since 1993, Marlborough Gallery, New York has represented him.
Catalogue
Richard Estes: Painting New York City is accompanied by a fully-illustrated, 64-page, full-color catalogue published by the Museum of Arts and Design. The publication features essays by Patterson Sims with a foreword by Glenn Adamson.
Audio Tour
An audio guide narrated by Patterson Sims, featuring Richard Estes and an introduction by Glenn Adamson will be available to visitors via handheld devices, MAD’s website, or by request at the Visitor Services desk.
EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION AND CREDITS
Richard Estes: Painting New York City is organized by guest curator Patterson Sims, along with Sophia Merkin, Curatorial Assistant and Project Manager.
Richard Estes: Painting New York City follows and builds upon Richard Estes’ Realism, also curated by Sims. Originated in 2014 by the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, Richard Estes’ Realism then traveled to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
Support for Richard Estes: Painting New York City is provided by Louis K. and Susan P. Meisel, T.A. Cox, Verena and Rod Cushman, Elizabeth B. and Edward C. Johnson III, Chris Jones, Arlene and Robert Kogod, Marlborough Gallery, the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, Ginny Mancini, the Robert Lehman Foundation, Susan and David Rockefeller, Dr. Judith Goldstein, and Wendy and Martin Kaplan.
Media Partner: artnet
RELATED PROGRAMMING
A series of free public programs will provide further insights into the exhibition and Estes’ career and creative process.
Public Programs
Family Programs
Featured Artist in MAD’s Open Studios
ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) champions contemporary makers across creative fields, presenting artists, designers, and artisans who apply the highest level of ingenuity and skill to their work. Since the Museum's founding in 1956 by philanthropist and visionary Aileen Osborn Webb, MAD has celebrated all facets of making and the creative processes by which materials are transformed, from traditional techniques to cutting-edge technologies. Today, the Museum's curatorial program builds upon a rich history of exhibitions that emphasize a cross-disciplinary approach to art and design, and reveals the workmanship behind the objects and environments that shape our everyday lives. MAD provides an international platform for practitioners who are influencing the direction of cultural production and driving 21st-century innovation, fostering a participatory setting for visitors to have direct encounters with skilled making and compelling works of art and design.
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