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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Freddy Rodríguez 

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When Freddy Rodríguez began painting abstract compositions in 1970, he was compelled by what he called the “emotional side” of geometric art. He favored a sharp, precise painting technique because it offered a contrast to the tumult of a childhood lived under the regime of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, a brutal dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1934 until his assassination in 1961; Rodríguez immigrated to New York two years later, at age eighteen. To be a “geometric artist,” he explained, you “have to be really together, emotionally, physically, intellectually.”

Rodríguez often embedded cultural references into his works. The title Y me quedé sin nombre (And I ran out of names), for example, riffs on the modernist tradition of leaving abstractions untitled. The artist also frequently drew inspiration from Afro-Caribbean dance traditions. Here, the stacked shapes and variety of angled lines evoke the multisensory experience of Merengue and Bachata, dance forms of deep significance to the Dominican Republic’s cultural traditions that were often coopted as symbols of nationalist propaganda during Trujillo’s dictatorship.

  • A blue background with teetering shapes in green with colored stripes.

    Freddy Rodríguez, Y me quedé sin nombre, 1974. Acrylic on canvas, 70 1/8 × 35 7/8 in. (178.1 × 91.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 2021.20. © Freddy Rodríguez

    A blue background with teetering shapes in green with colored stripes.

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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

Hear directly from artists and curators on selected works from the exhibition.

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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