Robert Huot: Painting as Object, The 1960s
In the early 1960s, painting found itself at a critical juncture. Grappling under the aegis of post-painterly abstraction and Clement Greenberg鈥檚 essentialist theories, this secular medium was losing ground to sculpture, which was growing into the so-called expanded field. Yet, at the same time, a more radical redefinition of the pictorial medium was already underway. Robert Huot, born in 1935, emerged as one of the first artists of his generation who, while steadfastly engaged with painting鈥檚 raison d'锚tre, simultaneously eschewed the formalist strictures of its established conventions. Beginning in 1962, Huot devised objective structural principles, employing geometric ratios to generate meta-images that gradually relinquished the painting鈥檚 iconic surface, turning instead to its physical properties and spatial configurations. Operating at the confluence of hard-edge abstraction, minimalism, and conceptual art, Huot鈥檚 shaped canvases, multi-paneled works, and sensuous sculptural paintings exalted the latent potential that abstraction contained in its seeds. In this context, it is imperative to reconsider how Robert Huot鈥檚 approach to painting not only offered unique perspectives on the medium鈥檚 transformation but also provided an unassuming yet pivotal contribution to the broader constellation of postwar American painting.
In 1965, Donald Judd compared Robert Huot鈥檚 pictorial objects to the works of the influential painter Ellsworth Kelly, an association that placed him squarely within the emergent critical discourse. That same year, Barbara Rose included him in her landmark article 鈥淎BC Art,鈥� which provided the first defining framework for minimalism. From this moment onward, Huot quickly garnered recognition. He participated in major exhibitions, such as Systemic Painting (1966), curated by Lawrence Alloway at the Guggenheim, in New York City; The Art of the Real (1969), by E.C. Goossen at MoMA, in New York City; and Modular Painting (1970) at the Albright-Knox Gallery, in Buffalo, New York. Yet it was in 1963, during his time as a student, that Huot鈥檚 trajectory was decisively altered. In January 1963, he collaborated with his classmate Robert Morris and La Monte Young on the performance War. In designing his costume, Huot found a new way of displacing the passive, traditional role of painting, relegated for so long to the wall. He created an unusually shaped canvas composed of two-tone wooden strips that he wore as a shield onstage while performing at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City. This gesture, momentous in its simplicity, turned painting into something radically new: no longer framed, fixed, or confined, it became mobile, mutable, free, and performative. It was ready to go to war against the rigid orthodoxy of modernist doxa.
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In the early 1960s, painting found itself at a critical juncture. Grappling under the aegis of post-painterly abstraction and Clement Greenberg鈥檚 essentialist theories, this secular medium was losing ground to sculpture, which was growing into the so-called expanded field. Yet, at the same time, a more radical redefinition of the pictorial medium was already underway. Robert Huot, born in 1935, emerged as one of the first artists of his generation who, while steadfastly engaged with painting鈥檚 raison d'锚tre, simultaneously eschewed the formalist strictures of its established conventions. Beginning in 1962, Huot devised objective structural principles, employing geometric ratios to generate meta-images that gradually relinquished the painting鈥檚 iconic surface, turning instead to its physical properties and spatial configurations. Operating at the confluence of hard-edge abstraction, minimalism, and conceptual art, Huot鈥檚 shaped canvases, multi-paneled works, and sensuous sculptural paintings exalted the latent potential that abstraction contained in its seeds. In this context, it is imperative to reconsider how Robert Huot鈥檚 approach to painting not only offered unique perspectives on the medium鈥檚 transformation but also provided an unassuming yet pivotal contribution to the broader constellation of postwar American painting.
In 1965, Donald Judd compared Robert Huot鈥檚 pictorial objects to the works of the influential painter Ellsworth Kelly, an association that placed him squarely within the emergent critical discourse. That same year, Barbara Rose included him in her landmark article 鈥淎BC Art,鈥� which provided the first defining framework for minimalism. From this moment onward, Huot quickly garnered recognition. He participated in major exhibitions, such as Systemic Painting (1966), curated by Lawrence Alloway at the Guggenheim, in New York City; The Art of the Real (1969), by E.C. Goossen at MoMA, in New York City; and Modular Painting (1970) at the Albright-Knox Gallery, in Buffalo, New York. Yet it was in 1963, during his time as a student, that Huot鈥檚 trajectory was decisively altered. In January 1963, he collaborated with his classmate Robert Morris and La Monte Young on the performance War. In designing his costume, Huot found a new way of displacing the passive, traditional role of painting, relegated for so long to the wall. He created an unusually shaped canvas composed of two-tone wooden strips that he wore as a shield onstage while performing at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City. This gesture, momentous in its simplicity, turned painting into something radically new: no longer framed, fixed, or confined, it became mobile, mutable, free, and performative. It was ready to go to war against the rigid orthodoxy of modernist doxa.
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A long-overlooked voice in postwar American art, Robert Huot (b. 1935) is receiving renewed attention for his radical redefinition of painting in the 1960s.
