ARTISTS
Reds
Since the cave paintings of Lascaux, the color red has played a starring role in the story of art history. Through the centuries, it has conjured emotions such as love, lust, and rage, and served as a symbol of wealth, war, revolution, and religious sacrifice. Red is one of the most powerful tools in an artist鈥檚 color arsenal. Its presence ensures bold visual impact and guarantees our immediate attention. Mnuchin Gallery is thus delighted to present Reds, an exhibition offering a focused look at artists鈥� use of red over sixty years, from the postwar period to the present day. The exhibition will include paintings and sculpture by twenty-five artists, including Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, and Mark Rothko, to name a few. The exhibition will be on view from April 27 through June 9, 2018.
For thousands of years red has been prized for its striking effect. Historically, its value stemmed from the sheer difficulty of obtaining the color itself, as only a few species of insects and plants produced it. A popular extraction method involved drying the cochineal bug, and since 70,000 insects were required for a single pound of pigment a highly competitive system of piracy developed among European countries bringing it from the New World. Its scarcity made it a luxury reserved for the only the wealthiest. Despite its availability today, red remains a color used to demarcate and distinguish objects of note.
This exhibition traces the myriad ways artists have harnessed red鈥檚 force across abstraction and figuration, painting and sculpture, to achieve remarkable proof of the color鈥檚 universal resonance. In paintings by Bacon, Bourgeois, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol, in which human figures or faces appear against intensely red backdrops, the color evokes narratives of love, violence, and tragedy for the paintings鈥� subjects. Other artists use the color to create immersive, meditative experiences for the viewer, whether by bathing him in red light, as in Dan Flavin鈥檚 untitled (to Sabine and Holger), 1966-71, or by confronting him with an immense red void, as in Robert Motherwell鈥檚 Open No. 153: In Scarlet with White Line, 1970. In works such as Arshile Gorky鈥檚 Agony, 1947, and Yayoi Kusama鈥檚 No. Red A 1960, 1960, the artists鈥� use of red can be interpreted as an expression of their individual psychological experiences, whereas Franz Kline and Rothko鈥檚 monumental abstractions speak to a more universal 鈥渟cale of human feeling, the human drama.鈥� Eliminating such gesture and expression from painting, Josef Albers and Ad Reinhardt pair subtle, almost imperceptibly varied shades of red to create conceptual studies on color itself.
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Since the cave paintings of Lascaux, the color red has played a starring role in the story of art history. Through the centuries, it has conjured emotions such as love, lust, and rage, and served as a symbol of wealth, war, revolution, and religious sacrifice. Red is one of the most powerful tools in an artist鈥檚 color arsenal. Its presence ensures bold visual impact and guarantees our immediate attention. Mnuchin Gallery is thus delighted to present Reds, an exhibition offering a focused look at artists鈥� use of red over sixty years, from the postwar period to the present day. The exhibition will include paintings and sculpture by twenty-five artists, including Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, and Mark Rothko, to name a few. The exhibition will be on view from April 27 through June 9, 2018.
For thousands of years red has been prized for its striking effect. Historically, its value stemmed from the sheer difficulty of obtaining the color itself, as only a few species of insects and plants produced it. A popular extraction method involved drying the cochineal bug, and since 70,000 insects were required for a single pound of pigment a highly competitive system of piracy developed among European countries bringing it from the New World. Its scarcity made it a luxury reserved for the only the wealthiest. Despite its availability today, red remains a color used to demarcate and distinguish objects of note.
This exhibition traces the myriad ways artists have harnessed red鈥檚 force across abstraction and figuration, painting and sculpture, to achieve remarkable proof of the color鈥檚 universal resonance. In paintings by Bacon, Bourgeois, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol, in which human figures or faces appear against intensely red backdrops, the color evokes narratives of love, violence, and tragedy for the paintings鈥� subjects. Other artists use the color to create immersive, meditative experiences for the viewer, whether by bathing him in red light, as in Dan Flavin鈥檚 untitled (to Sabine and Holger), 1966-71, or by confronting him with an immense red void, as in Robert Motherwell鈥檚 Open No. 153: In Scarlet with White Line, 1970. In works such as Arshile Gorky鈥檚 Agony, 1947, and Yayoi Kusama鈥檚 No. Red A 1960, 1960, the artists鈥� use of red can be interpreted as an expression of their individual psychological experiences, whereas Franz Kline and Rothko鈥檚 monumental abstractions speak to a more universal 鈥渟cale of human feeling, the human drama.鈥� Eliminating such gesture and expression from painting, Josef Albers and Ad Reinhardt pair subtle, almost imperceptibly varied shades of red to create conceptual studies on color itself.
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