John Goodyear: Shifting Views

May 4 - July 8, 2012

Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

by John Yau I. For more than fifty years, John Goodyear has been an artist who has repeatedly defied categorization. He was included in The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the first important survey of Op art. He has received commissions for important public sculptures. He has been called a kinetic artist, he has made both abstract and figurative work without privileging either, and he does drawings by hand as well as with a computer. As varied as this list is, I have touched only on a small part of Goodyear’s long career and diverse oeuvre. And yet, for all the different ways he has worked, one thing remains constant, and that is his playful kindness, which is equally serious and self-reflective.

For this exhibition, selections have been made from three distinct bodies of Goodyear’s work: pole paintings; kinetic/grid paintings; and double subject paintings. The earliest work is from the 1960s, and the latest are from 2012. Despite their noticeable differences, each group of work arises out of the artist’s long preoccupation with the nature of perception, and how it impacts our interaction with the everyday world.

What do we see? What do we remember of what we see? What is revealed and what is hidden? How do we untangle reality, as well as construct it? The questions are at once basic and philosophical. Goodyear’s work isn’t governed by style, but by his deep curiosity and willingness to experiment with different materials and processes.

Goodyear’s generosity is rare and, if we are open to it, empowering. He wants the viewer to interact with his work, but beyond that, to discover something about chance and perception—how one sees and actively engages with the ever-changing world. His interest in perception, change and chance dates back to his early career, in such works as the important piece, John Cage Throws a Fish into the Piano (1960).

John Cage Throws a Fish into the Piano consists of twelve identical, evenly spaced, four-sided, wooden poles suspended from the ceiling by monofilament. The viewer is free to set the poles in motion. As the poles revolve, the work changes continuously, never settling into a single, static view.

Each pole, which has been painted in white enamel, has three distinct focal points. Along the bottom of each, Goodyear has painted horizontal black stripes on the white enamel ground, evoking piano keys.

Above the horizontal stripes, and rising to about the middle of each pole, the artist has painted one or more of the pole’s four sides a solid color. This is where we are tempted to believe a readable image will coalesce, but it never does.

Taking the title as a cue, the shifting of the black and white stripes as the poles turn suggests someone is playing a piano. We might think we may catch a glimpse of a face in profile in the upper half, but it is more likely that the constantly shifting relationships among the bands, shapes, and colors alone will mesmerize us. opposite: Red & Black Movement (detail), 1964

There is a deeper import to the playfulness of Goodyear’s kinetic works, in which motion is a central feature.

His interest in the mechanics of perception has led him to make pieces which literally dissolve the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, seeing and remembering, right before the viewer’s eyes.

At the same time, Goodyear has explored the relationship between stasis and movement, as in Paesaggio (after Fra Angelico) (2011), and in Shoe, Umbrella, Telephone, Teacup and Saucer (2011), he has used familiar semiotic signs to contemplate the shift from recognition to memory. In Paesaggio (after Fra Angelico), the artist has drawn a linear landscape in black ink on all four sides of the sixteen poles painted in white acrylic. In order to experience all sides of the work, the viewer must start each pole spinning.

Paradoxically, as the poles turn, often at slightly different speeds, the landscape in Paesaggio (after Fra Angelico) seems to both change and stay the same. This is true and obvious, of course, when viewing an actual landscape, but it is not obvious if we are standing in front of a painting of a landscape. Goodyear’s landscape is neither real nor a painting in a conventional sense. Its sixteen four-sided poles underscore that one actively sees and is not simply the recipient of a visual message. We look, shift our attention elsewhere, and refocus. The process heightens and relaxes, but never comes to a complete standstill. We look and we blink and do much else.

Each of the four-sided poles in Shoe, Umbrella, Telephone, Teacup and Saucer contains a slice of the eponymous semiotic signs, each of which Goodyear has in a single color: green shoe, blue umbrella, black telephone, red teacup and saucer. Once the poles begin turning, what do we look for and what do we remember? It is unlikely the poles will ever align themselves into an image of one of the signs while turning.

And even if they did, the glimpse would be brief, at best, merely a stage that the poles passed through. We see things not quite forming, and always breaking down, and yet we are not necessarily alarmed by the deeper implications of this vision of reality. Beneath the gentle humor one senses an acceptance of change and disruption, of something being necessarily erased.

Goodyear’s work inevitably leads us to these kinds of conundrums, where we find ourselves both delighted and curious. For me, the question of how the artist does something is superseded by the question, why do I see it that way?

II. With his kinetic/grid paintings, which Goodyear started making around the same time as the pole paintings, the artist hit his stride by the early 1960s. His first solo exhibition at Amel Gallery in 1964 received a rave review from Brian O’Doherty in The New York Times. In O’Doherty’s estimation, Goodyear had become “one of the leaders of the new school of ‘optical’ abstraction.” He did so by “setting in motion a series of relativities so interdependent that they establish a new union between object and eye.”

The paintings are constructed with two or more open, vertical grids set in front of each other. At least one of the grids slides back and forth, generating constant reconfigurations and interactions among the colored, often evenly spaced abstract bands. The effect is gripping. Seeing becomes a pure experience, a realm at once active and contemplative. Colors flicker, shift, disappear and reappear. By seeing in such a heightened state, we also begin to consider what it is to see.

With these works, Goodyear’s generosity is everywhere present. It is the viewer who sets the poles and grids in motion. By inviting us to get things started, Goodyear implicates us. Our presence is required to both start and complete this world. In this regard, Goodyear’s generosity bridges seemingly incommensurable

artists and practices, with the mobiles and moving sculptures of Alexander Calder and Mark di Suvero (object makers) on one hand, and the performances of Allan Kaprow (non-object maker) on the other.

III. In the double subject paintings, Goodyear superimposes the contours of a painting by one historical figure onto another. In Composition in Orange and Blue (after Manet and Bazille), he has layered the contours of Edouard Manet’s fully clothed The Street Singer (1862) onto Frédéric Bazille’s nude Fisherman with Net (1868). Manet’s woman faces toward the viewer, while Bazille’s fisherman faces the other way. We unravel the figures while simultaneously joining them back together, noticing similarities and differences within the quietly intense dialogue between the two works, which Goodyear has carefully chosen.

In Composition in Green and Brown (after Renoir and Bazille), Goodyear superimposes Auguste Renoir’s La Promenade (1870) onto Frédéric Bazille’s Summer Scene (1869). In doing so, he unites the works of two close friends who were central to the Impressionist movement. Bazille’s painting was completed the year before he died in the Franco-Prussian War, at the age of twenty-eight. Renoir lived another fifty years and died at the age of seventy-eight. Goodyear’s painting is an homage to friendship, a commentary on art history, and an investigation of perception.

We can see them as abstractions, as figure drawings in paint, as a jumble of lines that need to be untangled, as an evocation of the erotics of seeing. They are at once direct and slow to reveal themselves. Unable to separate them completely, we come to recognize that we too are not separate from the world we inhabit.

In fact, we are part of something larger and more mysterious, which we can never see in its entirety. The glimpses that Goodyear’s works offer us, and the motion we must initiate, remind us that action is required of all of us, a commitment to seeing reality for what it is and isn’t.

John Yau is a poet, fiction writer, freelance curator, and critic. His latest book is A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns (D.A.P., 2009). He has a book of poems, Further Adventures in Monochrome, due out in spring 2012 from Copper Canyon Press. He teaches at Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers University).

by Mary Birmingham John Goodyear was the first artist I contacted after joining the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey as Curator in November 2010. Having admired his work for some time, I was interested in mounting a small show of his double subject paintings. In each of these works the artist reduces the compositions of two iconic paintings such as Cézanne’s Card Players and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, to outline drawings and superimposes them, creating a layered painting with two subjects. The viewer must continually shift focus in order to decipher the individual images. A visit to Goodyear’s studio convinced me to expand on this idea by placing these paintings in the context of other earlier and more recent works.

While Goodyear has experimented throughout his long career with a broad range of processes and materials that include painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, light and optics and even heat, this exhibition narrows the focus. John Goodyear: Shifting Views highlights twenty-five works from 1960 to the present that explore ideas about doubling and require the viewer to look twice. In addition to the overlapping images of the double subject paintings, two kinds of kinetic painted constructions are included; their movement produces altered images and randomly changing results. The meanings of all these works are continually in flux, dependent on the spectator’s shifting view.

Goodyear has always looked for ways to engage the viewer’s interactivity with his work; this practice conforms to an idea suggested by Marcel Duchamp—arguably a philosophical and artistic “godfather” to Goodyear. Duchamp once gave a lecture on the subject of creativity in which he stated: All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.1 Goodyear allows the spectator an even greater role in the creative act and ultimately more control over the image because the viewer’s physical intervention, while often random in nature, directly determines what the viewer sees. His work suggests that we not limit our vision to only one viewpoint because there is always more than one way to see things. He asks us to shift the position of the artwork physically, or else to shift our way of looking at it by narrowing or expanding our vision: Some mental movement may take place in viewing the double subject paintings. First you see one image, then the other, and perhaps for some viewers the intricate chance relationships between them both. For viewers of the kinetic work, being allowed to set the work in motion also makes the work belong in a certain sense to them. Engaging the viewer in this way since the fifties predicted notions of the “de-centered artist,” which I read about half a century later. opposite: Paesaggio (after Fra Angelico) (detail), 2011 1

Marcel Duchamp, “The Creative Act,” published in: Robert Lebel, Marcel Duchamp (New York: Paragraphic Books, 1959) 77-78

A consistent push and pull between figuration and abstraction has characterized much of Goodyear’s work in his attempts to reconcile abstract art with realism. In the double subject paintings the first image comes into focus, and then it dissolves into an abstract tangle of lines as the opposite one sharpens; the two images continue to advance and recede, vying for the spectator’s attention. When the individual elements in the pole paintings spin, the viewer’s experience shifts between recognizable images (like a telephone or an umbrella) and randomly arranged fragments of these shapes. The dynamism of these works helps Goodyear shift the view from reality to abstraction and back again.

While the phrase “shifting views” can refer to an activity (changing one’s viewpoint) as well as an observed reality (views that continually change), it is also an appropriate way to describe Goodyear’s intellectual curiosity and experimental nature. For more than sixty years his open-minded approach has helped him find new ways to refine his thinking, expand his ideas, and refresh his aesthetic vision. Goodyear’s shifting views have always led to significant changes and growth in his work. He observed in 2005, “Creating is probably not much more than seeing something in a new context or finding a new use for something. There may not be anything new on earth, but there are new relationships.”2 An examination of several of the artist’s recent works reveals the vitality of these relationships.

Goodyear often observes and responds to the art of the past. In the fall of 2011, he visited the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris to see an exhibition of Italian Renaissance art, “Fra Angelico and the Masters of Light,” which showcased the 15th century Dominican friar and some of his contemporaries. One work in the show profoundly affected Goodyear—an example of a specific type of panoramic painting called a “Thebaid” that depicted early Christian saints and hermits in the Egyptian desert surrounding ancient Thebes. The painting, owned by the Uffizi Gallery and attributed to Fra Angelico, is eighty-five inches wide but contains no focal point or singular narrative; instead, there are what Goodyear calls “little pockets of action” all over its surface. The continuous landscape is dotted with mountains, hills, rocks, trees, water, houses, boats, people, animals and even a few devils, with each of the elements carrying equal pictorial weight. It is impossible to absorb it all with one glance.3 By shifting focus and fixing one’s attention on any

above: Fra Angelico, The Thebaid, ca. 1420, tempera on wood, 29 1/2 x 81 7/8 inches, Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

Photo Credit: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, NY 2

John Goodyear, The Elemental Series (Lawrenceville, NJ, Rider University Art Gallery, 2005)

3

This quality is also notable in one of Goodyear’s public commissions, Chiron, (1983). Installed on a plaza at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Piscataway, NJ, the work is so large (200 feet across) that the viewer experiences it as an abstract pattern up close, and only recognizes the image when seen from the higher floors of the building.

given area of the painting, other parts are temporarily obscured; by changing one’s view it is possible to change the subject of the work.

Goodyear’s response to this work, Paesaggio (after Fra Angelico) (2011), reduces the intricacy of the Renaissance painting to a series of black and white line drawings executed on sixteen four-sided acrylic poles.

By fragmenting the original panorama into separate spinning segments, he very literally addresses the challenge of representing the shifting visual field—a problem that has always intrigued him. He reflects on the work: Its greatest success may be that, like the Renaissance work, the viewer does not know how to look at it. Because of the scale and the lengthy horizontality of both, neither work can be seen altogether from any distance. If one backs up to see the entire piece, it becomes impossible to see the intimate detail.

This is accentuated in my version by the temptation to watch the changes on each pole as it turns.

Utility Shift (2012), another new black-and-white painting, offers a complete contrast to the size and complexity of Paesaggio (after Fra Angelico). In this comparatively tiny (8 x 8 inches) work a fixed painted panel presents two possible “endings” for a hand tool—a hammer on one side and a wrench on the other. The viewer controls the image by shifting a moveable section from side to side in front of the fixed panel, simultaneously hiding and revealing the opposite outcomes of hammer and wrench. Many of Goodyear’s kinetic paintings from the 1960s created an optical effect when the viewer moved a suspended grid; in this new work the intention is not to create a sensation, but rather a new image or an alternate view. While chance is a major element in the pole paintings—one can never predict what views the spinning poles will reveal—in Utility Shift the outcome is less random and more in the deliberate control of the viewer.

The artist has always been interested in the differences between the real world and the painted world, and several of his new works explore these differences in innovative ways. Orange and Blue Redemption (2011) combines two of Goodyear’s previous kinetic strategies: freely spinning poles and a fixed painted panel.

For this work he suspends three orange and blue wooden poles in front of the painted image of an orange and blue pole; in the viewer’s eye the three moving poles interact with the illusion of the stationary pole, setting up an ambiguous visual “conversation.” Goodyear points out that the presence of the real poles and their representation on the canvas reverses a long-standing assumption in painting theory, namely that the signifier takes the place of the signified that isn’t there. In this provocative new work he asks, “What does it mean to have both the signified and the signifier together?”

Often mature artists with well-rounded careers circle back to their earlier works, revisiting them with fresh eyes, and Goodyear is certainly among them. He has noted that time away from an idea or image is often beneficial; re-engaging with it can lead to new developments and discoveries. With a career that spans more than six decades Goodyear has much to reflect on, but he also continues to look ahead, re-examining old challenges and seeking out new ones. Looking backward and forward at the same time might be the ultimate “shifting view.” Just recently he wrote to me about one of the newest pieces in the show, Orange and Blue Redemption. He was quite pleased with the work, but in true fashion kept thinking about ways to refine and resolve it. He told me, “At any rate, whatever it is I believe there is something going on that I hope to investigate further. In fact the second version is in my downstairs studio half done…”

For John Goodyear there will always be “something going on,” and we trust he will continue to investigate.

Mary Birmingham is Curator at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from the artist are taken from correspondence with the author between November 2010 and April 2012.

I am grateful for this ongoing dialogue, which has taught me much about art and life, and continually prompts me to shift my views of John Goodyear—from artist, to teacher to friend and back. MB

opposite: John Cage Throws a Fish into the Piano (detail), 1960

John Cage Throws a Fish into the Piano, 1960 (above: detail; opposite: random view)

Shoe, Umbrella, Telephone, Teacup and Saucer, 2011 (above: details showing each of four sides; opposite: random view)

Probability Project, 2011 (four random views)

Circle, Square, Triangle, Chair, 2010 (four random views)

Orange and Blue Redemption, 2011

Paesaggio (after Fra Angelico), 2011

Food for Thought, 2011 (above: details showing each of four sides—broccoli, tomato, potato and beet; opposite: detail of random view)

opposite: Composition in Black and Green (after Degas and Seurat) (detail), 2001

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Composition in Light Blue and Green (after Delacroix and Manet), 2002 (above: digitally separated details)

Composition in Green and Brown (after Renoir and Bazille), 2002

Composition in Red and Black (after Manet and Titian), 2002

Composition in Blue and Black (after Picasso and CĂŠzanne), 2007

Composition in Orange and Maroon (after David and Pollaiuolo), 2001

Composition in Red and Blue (after Velรกzquez and Vermeer), 2003

Composition in Orange and Blue (after Manet and Bazille), 2003

opposite: Red, Yellow, Blue Construction (detail), 1978

Inter-action, 1964 (six views)

Utility Shift, 2012 (three views)

Black and Red Movement, 1964

Curve in Motion, 1964

Black Circle, 2012 (three views)

Exhibition Checklist John Cage Throws a Fish into the Piano 1960 Enamel on wood 72 x 33 x 6 inches Black and Red Movement 1964 Acrylic on panel and wood 24 x 24 x 6 inches Curve in Motion 1964 Acrylic on panel and wood 24 x 24 x 6 inches

Composition in Light Blue and Green (after Delacroix and Manet) 2002 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches Composition in Red and Black (after Manet and Titian) 2002 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches

Kinetic Extension 2011 Acrylic on panel and wood 24 x 24 x 3 inches (not illustrated in catalogue) Orange and Blue Redemption 2011 Acrylic on canvas and wood 24 x 24 x 7 inches Paesaggio (after Fra Angelico) 2011 Ink on acrylic bars 24 x 48 x 6 inches

Inter-action 1964 Acrylic on canvas and wood 24 x 24 x 6 inches

Composition in Blue and Dark Green (after Poussin and Courbet) 2003 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches (not illustrated in catalogue)

Rising Blue 1964 / 2011 Acrylic on canvas and wood 24 x 24 x 6 inches (not illustrated in catalogue)

Composition in Orange and Blue (after Manet and Bazille) 2003 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches

Shoe, Umbrella, Telephone, Teacup and Saucer 2011 Acrylic on wood 72 x 39 x 6 inches

Red, Yellow, Blue Construction 1978 Acrylic on wood 28 ¾ x 29 ¼ x 6 inches

Composition in Red and Blue (after Velázquez and Vermeer) 2003 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches Collection of Frank Magalhães & Rita Asch

Black Circle 2012 Acrylic on canvas and wood 24 x 24 x 3 inches

Composition in Black and Green (after Degas and Seurat) 2001 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches Composition in Orange and Maroon (after David and Pollaiuolo) 2001 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches Composition in Green and Brown (after Renoir and Bazille) 2002 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches

Composition in Blue and Black (after Picasso and Cézanne) 2007 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches Circle, Square, Triangle, Chair 2010 Acrylic on wood 36 x 39 x 6 inches Food for Thought 2011 Acrylic latex on acrylic bars 96 x 39 x 6 inches

All works courtesy of the artist, unless otherwise noted

Probability Project 2011 Acrylic on wood 19 x 15 x 6 inches

Utility Shift 2012 Acrylic on canvas and wood 8 x 8 x 3 inches Standing Signified and Signifier 2012 Latex and acrylic on wood 204 x 19 x 11 ½ inches (not illustrated in catalogue)

John Goodyear Education

University of Michigan; Master of Design, 1954; Bachelor of Design, 1952

Employment

Professor of Art, Rutgers University, 1964-97; Instructor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1962-64; Instructor, University of Michigan, Grand Rapids, 1956-62; Draftee, US Army, Sendai, Japan, 1954-56

Public Commissions (Selected)

2002 The Four Arts, aluminum, Douglass Campus, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick 1991 The Dawn of Law, five marble reliefs, The State House, Trenton, New Jersey 1984 Drawn from the Water, stone reliefs, The Jewish Center, Princeton, New Jersey 1983 Chiron, plaza tableau in cement slabs, University College of Medicine and Dentistry, Piscataway, New Jersey 1981 Taking Flight, light construction, International Business Machines, Triangle Park, Raleigh, North Carolina 1980 The Test, kinetic painting, Educational Testing Services, Princeton, New Jersey

Works in Public Collections (Selected)

Art-in-Embassies Collection, United States State Department, Washington, DC Biblioteca di Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France The British Museum, London, England Brooklyn Museum, New York City Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City Instituto Cultural Peruano-Norte Americano, Lima, Peru Library of Congress, Washington, DC Macedonian Center for Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City James A. Michener Museum of Art, Doylestown, Pennsylvania Milwaukee Art Center, Wisconsin Musée des Beaux Arts de l’Ontario, Toronto, Canada Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, Spain Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Museum of Modern Art, New York City National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Newark Museum, New Jersey New Jersey State Museum, Trenton Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California Stiftung fur Konstrucktive und Konkrete Kunst, Zurich, Switzerland The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, New Jersey

One-Artist Exhibitions (Selected)

2011 Hostetter Gallery, Martinsville, New Jersey 2005 Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, New Jersey 2004 Gallery of Fine Art, Newtown, Pennsylvania 2001 Ben Shahn Galleries, William Paterson University, Wayne, New Jersey 2000 Michener Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania (catalogue)

1995 Frank Martin Gallery, Muhlenburg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania 1993 Jersey City Museum, New Jersey 1992 Snyder Fine Art, New York City 1989 Pyramid Gallery, New York City 1987 Princeton Gallery of Fine Arts, New Jersey 1981 Slusser Gallery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

New Jersey State Museum, Trenton 1976 Center of Advanced Visual Studies, M.I.T., Cambridge, Massachusetts

Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts 1975 New Jersey State Museum, Trenton 1972 Inhibodress Gallery, Sydney, Australia

Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania

Everson Museum, Syracuse University, New York 1972 Andrew Dickson White Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 1967 Douglass College Art Gallery, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 1966-65-64 Amel Gallery, New York City

Group Exhibitions (Short List)

2011 American Abstract Artists, OK Harris Gallery, New York City 2010 1960s Revisited, David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2009 Lilliput, Walsh Gallery, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey 2008 In Suspension, Mason Gross Galleries, New Brunswick, New Jersey 2007 Conceptual Objects, Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York City

Demoiselles Revisited, Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York City 2004 Twister, Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas 2001 500 Drawings on Paper, Gary Snyder Fine Art, New York City 1997 Geometric Abstraction 1937-1997, Snyder Fine Art, New York City 1994 Cracks in the Modern, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Canada 1993 Blast Art, X Art Foundation, New York City 1992 Ten Steps, Horodner-Romley Gallery, New York City 1992 Kunstler zwischen Idee und Realization, Amerikahaus, Cologne, Germany 1989 Geometric Abstraction and the Modern Spirit, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York

Group Show, Macedonian Center for Contemporary Art, Thessalonika, Greece 1981 American Abstract Artists, Summit Art Center, New Jersey 1980 Spirit of Constructivism, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York 1973 Interaction, Center of Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts and two year tour 1972 Arte de Sistemas II, Centro de Arte y Comunicacion, Buenos Aires, Argentina

3 Bienal de Arte Coltejer, Medellin, Colombia, South America

Untitled III, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City 1971 Unlikely Photographs, Institute of Contemporary Art, London (traveling)

Elements of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts 1968 Annual, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City

Plus by Minus, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Artists under Forty, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City 1967 Radius 5, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC (traveling) 1966 Light/Motion/Space, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Contemporary American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art

Annual Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City 1965 The Responsive Eye, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Art in Science, Albany Institute of History and Art, New York

Kinetic and Optic Art Today, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York 1960 New Forms-New Media I and II, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York City

johngoodyear.wordpress.com

Acknowledgements The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey is most pleased to be celebrating the artistic career of one of New Jersey’s own, John Goodyear. Not only is he a great artist of our time but a dedicated educator who spent more than thirty years at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts teaching and inspiring generations of gifted young art students. While Goodyear has worked in a variety of media and processes, we focus our exhibition on works that interact with and perhaps challenge the viewer’s understanding—seeing double, changing views, shifting perspectives—unsettling the viewer with multiple meanings. We are honored to be able to exhibit his work and demonstrate the power of his expression.

I would like to thank Mary Birmingham, our Curator, for bringing this important exhibition to the Arts Center. I am grateful to esteemed poet and critic John Yau for his insightful essay on the artist. I would also like to thank our Exhibitions Manager Katie Murdock, Design & Publications Coordinator Kristin Maizenaski, Exhibition Associate Yadira Hernandez and my entire staff for their hard work and commitment to all that we do. I extend special gratitude to our Board of Trustees who support all of our efforts. Finally, I would very much like to thank Bank of America for their continuing support and for sharing our commitment to furthering the understanding and appreciation of contemporary art and for helping us bring art and people together.

Marion Grzesiak

Executive Director, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

Visual Arts Center of New Jersey Board of Trustees

Founding Visionary

Staff

Rachel Weinberger, Chair Jim Welch, Vice Co-Chair John J. DeLaney, Vice Co-Chair Jay L. Ludwig, Secretary Sarah Johnson, Treasurer

William B. Nicholson

Marion Grzesiak, Executive Director

Patricia A. Bell Marie J. Cohen Millie Cooper Kelly J. Deere Ellyn Dennison Keith C. Dolin Malcolm D. Knight David McLean Victor Nichols Mary-Kate O’Hare Mitchell Radin Jenny Reinhardt Lacey Rzeszowski Ann Schaffer Laura Schaffer R. Malcolm Schwartz Pamela Shipley Elizabeth F. Skoler Elisa Zachary

Honorary Trustees Sally Abbott Shirley Aidekman-Kaye Dr. Virginia Butera Millie Cooper Elizabeth C. Gump Marion Nicholson Joseph R. Robinson Roland Weiser Sue Welch

Mary Birmingham, Curator Mari D’Alessandro, Director of Programs & Communications Ernie Palatucci, Director of Finance & Operations Nancy Shannon, Director of Development Rupert Adams, Building Superintendent Vanessa Batista, Studio School Manager Fabiana Bloom, Membership & Special Events Manager Cara Bramson, Programs Manager Jen Doninger, Customer Relations Associate Deborah Farley, Customer Relations Associate Monica Finkel, Operations Manager Yadira Hernandez N., Exhibitions Associate Bruce Lyons, Communications & Marketing Manager Kristin Maizenaski, Design & Publications Coordinator Amber Nelson, Studio School Associate Alice Mateychak, Customer Relations Associate Teresa Mendez, Customer Relations Associate Katherine Murdock, Exhibitions Manager Leon Norris, Custodian Mara Norris, Custodian Lisa Owens, Customer Relations Associate Barbara Smith, Registrar Pat Tiedeman, Accountant Lan Wei, Bookkeeper

68 Elm Street, Summit, NJ 07901 908.273.9121 www.artcenternj.org Gallery Hours Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday: 10 am – 5 pm Thursday: 10 am – 8 pm Saturday & Sunday: 11 am – 4 pm Photography Credits Red, Yellow, Blue Construction: Ricardo Barros All other photos: Kristin Maizenaski Colophon Design by Kristin Maizenaski Printed by InnerWorkings © 2012, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey ISBN: 978-0-925915-40-5 This exhibition made possible by Major support for the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey is provided in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The Horizon Foundation of New Jersey, the WJS Foundation, Audrey & Zygi Wilf and the Wilf Family Foundation, and Art Center members and donors. To learn more about Art Center programs, visit our website at www.artcenternj.org or call 908.273.9121.