Allan McCollum
1944–
Allan McCollum, who began exhibiting in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, sought to escape the legacy of formalism—the theory that helped make Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting the dominant styles of postwar American art. Inspired by the performative and conceptual aspects of movements like Fluxus, and by the standardization and modularity of industrial production, he attempted to make an object that would embody only the idea of painting. McCollum wanted to show that cultural conventions and contexts, rather than any qualities inherent in the work itself, made a painting what it was.
In 1978 McCollum assembled the first of his “surrogates” from wood and mat board, then painted the center of this picture-like object black. He went on to make many of these surrogates, initially crafting each one by hand; in 1982 he began casting them in plaster, which allowed for a larger production volume. For his 1983 exhibition at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York, he filled the walls with hundreds of plaster surrogates. The exhibition perfectly illustrated the participation of art in a system of cultural rules dictating how it is made, displayed, viewed, and sold. Fabricated by McCollum and his assistants, works such as Collection of Two Hundred and Eighty-eight Plaster Surrogates represent a type of labor that is not “artistic” on its face but anonymous and communal. McCollum has said that “a painting is what it is because it is a convention. It exists precisely because the culture makes a place for it.”
Introduction
Allan McCollum (born 4 August 1944) is a contemporary American artist who lives and works in New York City. In 1975, his work was included in the Whitney Biennial, and he moved to New York City the same year. In the late 1970s, he became especially well known for his series, Surrogate Paintings.
He has spent over fifty years exploring how objects achieve public and personal meaning in a world caught up in the contradictions made between unique handmade artworks and objects of mass production, and in the early 1990s, he began focusing most on collaborations with small regional communities and historical society museums in different parts of the world. His first solo exhibition was in 1970 and his first New York showing was in a group exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1972.
Wikidata identifier
Q2837749
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 25, 2025.
Introduction
McCollum's sculptures typically consist of many separate, hand-crafted elements, usually casts from toys, bottle caps, drawer pulls and candy molds. American artist, New York, N.Y.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, author, installation artist, painter, photographer, sculptor
ULAN identifier
500118788
Names
Allan McCollum, Allan Mccollum, Allan MacCollum
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 25, 2025.
