Richard Artschwager, a painter and sculptor whose genre-defying work influenced Pop Art and Minimalism while eluding either categorization, passed away Saturday morning in Albany, New York. The 89-year-old artist died after a stroke, his wife told the New York Times.
The unconventional sculptor, born in Washington D.C., was known for his paradoxical, challenging and surprising viewpoints, defying genres, materials and artistic expectations with transformative wit. "Sculpture is for the touch, painting is for the eye," he wrote in his journals in the 1960s. "I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch."
Whether through his tiny oblong "Blps" sculptures, his iconic 1987 cover of the Paris Review, or transformative abstract paintings derived from black-and-white photographs, Artschwager excelled at crafting objects of the unexpected. Before becoming a late-blooming artist, he attended Cornell University, served in the military and endured a brief stint specializing in infant photography. In 1965, at 42 years old, the artist first exhibited his work with influential New York dealer Leo Castelli. A recent retrospective honoring Artschwager's uncanny canon closed this month at the Whitney, which ran in tandem with an installation of the artist's "Blps" around the High Line in New York's Chelsea neighborhood.
Review our favorite quotes about the influential artist in the slideshow below:
Richard Artschwager!
And see Artschwager discuss his legendary "Blps" in the video below:
MORE ARTS NEWS
Moore To Be Restored: "Knife Edge Two Piece," a long-neglected damaged sculpture by British icon Henry Moore will finally get conserved (so stop carving your initials into it, please). (The Art Newspaper.)
Architecture Against Drones: As concerns grow regarding the government's plans to expand domestic drones, one student is using design as a means of exploring our privacy. "Architecture is a way to protect people when law chooses not to." (Salon)
Cash-Strapped Schools Sell Art Collections: Why smaller schools are selling their art collections to get paid in hard times. "They were in a dire financial strait...and this was what they needed to do in order to get money for the university." (Minnesota Daily)
Russian Art Center Chooses New Yorker As Next Curator: Artsy-creator Dasha Zhukova has chosen a new curator for her nonprofit art house, the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture. Kate Fowle, a British-born art worlder who has been living in New York for the past several years, will join the cast and crew of the Moscow organization next year. (The New York Times)
Making Someone Else's Art: What is it like to make art for "idea" artists like Jeff Koons and Tara Donovan? "Stenciling originally made its debut on paintings that had dotted imagery," a former Koons assistant explained. “Using a plotter to feed vinyl through, we would print patterns of dots on sheets the size of tables. We would then apply the vinyl onto the painting, and with oil paint, stipple the paint by hand." Oof. (Cluster Mag)
Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons' "The Painter" and "The Sculptor" was on view at Schirn Kunsthalle and Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung last year.