In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985

Oct 19, 2022–Mar 5, 2023

A collection of red acrylic paint is layered in quick strokes that resembles a collection of particles, like a body of sand.

Alma Thomas (1891–1978), Mars Dust, 1972. Acrylic on canvas, 69 1/4 × 57 1/8 in. (175.9 × 145.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from The Hament Corporation 72.58

A collection of red acrylic paint is layered in quick strokes that resembles a collection of particles, like a body of sand.

In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985 brings together artworks from the Whitney's collection that cross boundaries and upset conventions. Regardless of whether they pour across or sit on the floor, the sculptures included here explore painting’s domain through investigations of color, surface, and optical perception. The paintings, conversely, engage with sculptural concerns by taking up ideas long associated with three-dimensional art, such as balance and objecthood.

The works share many crossover effects, but their greatest affinity is in revealing how artists during this period were persistently questioning how we relate to, react to, and fit into (or are alienated from) physical space. Such queries were top of mind for sculptors associated with movements that flourished at this time, including Minimalism, Post-Minimalism, and feminist art. Similarly, just as many critics were arguing that painting had reached a dead end, painters active in the 1970s and early 1980s asserted the medium’s enduring vitality by pursuing untraditional starting points like shaped canvases, mathematically driven abstract compositions, and other explorations of positive and negative space that called attention to perception.

By commingling elements of painting and sculpture, these works exist beyond established limits of what artists can do and upset the balance of preexisting ideas of what art can be.

This exhibition is organized by Jennie Goldstein, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Major support for In the Balance: Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985 is provided by the Jon and Mary Shirley Foundation.

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Tishan Hsu 

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The surfaces of Tishan Hsu’s sculptural painting Outer Banks of Memory both project out into space and recede into themselves. The artist built up some passages using Styrofoam and cement, while elsewhere he carved lines into the painted support. Hsu was attuned to how televisions and computers shared with painting the expectation that they could serve as windows into illusory worlds. The molded, curved shapes evoke human forms or landscapes; accumulated thin indentations in the surface conjure the static of analogue televisions; and the screenlike form near the artwork’s center calls attention to these related themes. Instead of leading viewers into another imagined space, the work asserts its physicality. As Hsu explained, “I did not want a square image in the sense of the window of a canvas... I wanted these things to be objects on the wall.”

  • Organic shapes in pastels with black shading.

    Tishan Hsu, Outer Banks of Memory, 1984. Acrylic, concrete, Styrofoam, oil, and enamel on wood, 89 15/16 × 94 3/4 × 8 5/8 in. (228.4 × 240.7 × 21.8 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 2021.105a-c. © 2022 Tishan Hsu / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

    Organic shapes in pastels with black shading.

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Essay

Artist sitting amongst large sculptures

Balancing Acts

By Jennie Goldstein, Assistant Curator

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Audio guides

Judy Chicago, Trinity (Outdoor Version), 1965/2019. Matthews polyurethane paint on stainless steel, overall: 63 3/8 × 127 1/4 × 60 in. (161 × 323.2 × 152.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 2022.45a-c. © Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society, New York

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Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

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In the News

“To tackle chaos but achieve order nonetheless—that’s when balance is beautiful.” —The Wall Street Journal

“The exhibition, an anthology of innovation, is not only enjoyable, it shows the experimental bent of these artists extremely well.” —The Brooklyn Rail