Art History from Home:
Abstract Art in America
Tues, Nov 24, 2020
6 pm
Theaster Gates, Minority Majority, 2012. Decommissioned fire hoses and vinyl on plywood, 66 x 111 1/2 x 3 3/4 in. (167.6 x 283.2 x 9.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Barbara and Michael Gamson 2016.262. © Theaster Gates. Photograph © White Cube (Ben Westoby)
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Nonrepresentational art has meant different things to different artists throughout American art history. This session presents a range of artists who have used abstract language to explore human perception, emotion, embodied experience, and more. It covers the early influence of Cubism and the American Abstract Artists union in the 1930s, as well as the work of Abstract Expressionists, Minimalists, and artists associated with the 1960s civil rights movement.
Grant Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of art history at the University of Southern California and a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney. His dissertation, Sheila Hicks: Weaving to the World, traces the first critical history of the prolific American artist, weaver, and pioneer of global contemporary art. An active curator, critic, and writer, he has published writing in Artforum, Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail, Garage, and Performa, where he was a writer-in-residence from 2012 to 2014.