Extended through July 13, 2019
Works Exhibited
About
Gagosian is pleased to announce the opening of Continuing Abstraction, a group exhibition to inaugurate the new gallery in Basel. The new space is located at Rheinsprung 1, and opens on the occasion of Art Basel 2019.
The exhibition explores the trajectory of abstraction in the United States and Europe from the immediate postwar period to the present, tracing artists’ diverse approaches to materiality and gesture—from the dripped and poured paint of Abstract Expressionism to the multireferential innovations at the forefront of painting today.
The earliest works included are by Willem de Kooning: January (1947–48) and Untitled (1948). These paintings serve as a fulcrum between the observation-based abstraction set in motion by Cubism and Expressionism and the nonobjectivity that characterized much of postwar American abstraction. In de Kooning’s paintings, biomorphic forms appear as fragments that transform into thick painterly strokes; while in Jackson Pollock’s Moon Vibrations (c. 1953–55), the figure disappears entirely, and the canvas becomes a record of an event—the act of painting itself. In Helen Frankenthaler’s With Blue from the same year, the events unfold more slowly, with areas of semitransparent paint soaked into the canvas over time; and in works by Cy Twombly and Robert Ryman from the late 1950s and early ’60s, gesture teeters between legibility and obfuscation, pattern and chaos. Mark Grotjahn’s Untitled (Capri 50.85) (2018) takes repetitive gesture to a new extreme, with its arcs of thick paint evoking sedimentary cross sections or horizonless landscapes.
For Mark Rothko and Brice Marden, the materiality of paint and the evocative nature of color are key, pulling the viewer into seemingly immeasurable voids. The meditative power of color in these works is countered by the measured seriality of Donald Judd’s aluminum wall sculptures and by the delicate and imperfect geometries of Agnes Martin’s untitled canvas completed around 1999, wherein carefully rendered graphite lines create horizontal bands of luminous, pale blue space. In Mary Weatherford’s Ruby, Ruby (2019), a red neon light casts an artificial glow across the canvas, combining the industrial coolness of Minimalism with the unique tactility of Flashe paint, applied in thin transparent layers.
#ContinuingAbstraction
Mary Weatherford: The Flaying of Marsyas
In conjunction with her exhibition The Flaying of Marsyas at Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice, Mary Weatherford discusses the featured paintings, which are directly inspired by Titian’s late, eponymous masterpiece of circa 1570–76 and reflect her enduring fascination with the painting.
Brice Marden
Larry Gagosian celebrates the unmatched life and legacy of Brice Marden.
In Conversation
Irving Blum and Dorothy Lichtenstein
In celebration of the centenary of Roy Lichtenstein’s birth, Irving Blum and Dorothy Lichtenstein sat down to discuss the artist’s life and legacy, and the exhibition Lichtenstein Remembered curated by Blum at Gagosian, New York.
In Conversation
Daniel Belasco and Scott Rothkopf on Roy Lichtenstein
Gagosian and the Art Students League of New York hosted a conversation on Roy Lichtenstein with Daniel Belasco, executive director of the Al Held Foundation, and Scott Rothkopf, senior deputy director and chief curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Organized in celebration of the centenary of the artist’s birth and moderated by Alison McDonald, chief creative officer at Gagosian, the discussion highlights multiple perspectives on Lichtenstein’s decades-long career, during which he helped originate the Pop art movement. The talk coincides with Lichtenstein Remembered, curated by Irving Blum and on view at Gagosian, New York, through October 21.
Roy and Irving
Actor and art collector Steve Martin reflects on the friendship and professional partnership between Roy Lichtenstein and art dealer Irving Blum.
In Conversation
Carol Armstrong and John Elderfield
In conjunction with the exhibition Drawing within Nature: Paintings from the 1990s at Gagosian in New York, Carol Armstrong and John Elderfield discuss Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings and large-scale works on paper dating from 1990 to 1995.
