Reception and Talk: Abstraction after Pop

Floor 8

Open to Patron, Circle, Fellow, and Sponsor Members

“This is the death of painting!” It is rumored that Willem de Kooning pronounced these words in 1962 upon seeing Andy Warhol’s canvases depicting Coca-Cola bottles. In this lecture, teaching fellow Ayanna Dozier will explore the art of the 1960s and early 1970s, a time of creative crisis for de Kooning and other artists associated with Abstract Expressionism. As the slick, representational Pop art epitomized by Warhol gained wider recognition, a new concern with interpersonal dynamics and emotion came to the fore in the work of abstract artists. The talk will trace this social dimension in the work of veteran figures such as de Kooning and Mark Rothko and also consider innovations introduced by a rising generation of abstract painters, including Joan Mitchell and Ed Clark.

Ayanna Dozier, one of the Whitney’s Joan Tisch Teaching Fellows, is a PhD candidate in Art History & Communication Studies with a graduate option in Women & Gender Studies at McGill University. Her writing on Black feminist philosophy, experimental cinema, comic books, and performance art can be found in Cléo Journal, Feminist Media Studies, and Liquid Blackness Journal.

Patron, Circle, Fellow, and Sponsor members are invited to this event. The invitation is for two individuals per membership household.