Al Held CHEIM
held cover 2-18-13 copy.indd 2
1961-1967
& RE A D
CHEIM & RE A D
Al Held Alphabet Paintings
2/20/13 1:23 PM
Al Held Alphabet Paintings CHEIM & RE AD NE W YORK
Bi g A Pa i n ts Bi g N R O B ERT ST O R R The brashness of Al Held’s work often distracts attention from its deeply traditional roots and ramifications, just as the freshness of his color and sleekness of his shapes and surfaces belies the historical status his work has in fact reached. Nevertheless, those ties are there for all to see, even though his accomplishment’s true dimensions are something with which the public has yet to fully reckon. On both counts the present exhibition of so-called Alphabet paintings provides ample food for thought as well as abundant pleasure for the eye. During the later half of the Held’s long career his most obvious ties to the past were to the Renaissance old masters with whose work he became intimately acquainted during his decades as a part-time resident in Umbria where he kept a studio near Todi. Instead of the classical figuration that had long drawn artists to Italy, what enthralled him was the spatial drama unleashed by the discovery of perspective, but perspective as it could be viewed and reinterpreted through the prism of geometric abstraction in the era of astronauts. Of course, modernist ideology had had it that such abstraction must hug the picture plane, making anti-illusionistic “flatness” a dogma of the day. At least that was the case in New York in the 1950s when Held first hit his stride. And while nobody much cares about such strictures now, except insofar as they inform works that we can admire for qualities other than their adherence to anachronistic doctrine, it remains true that such ideas exerted a powerful influence on artists inclined toward palpable structural rigor. To the degree that he, as a young man, hewed to modernist principles of mid-century Formalism, the initially modest but eventually immense vistas Held conjured out of compounded polyhedra from the late 1960s until his death in 2005 were a way of arguing with himself over ideological mandates of just this order. It was also a means of contemplating what had been lost to painting when Cubism fractured and collapsed Leon Battista Alberti’s model for projecting three-dimensions into two, as well as what might be regained by allowing such disarticulated and compressed volumes to reconstitute their depth and breadth and reassert their tensile strength. Whether anyone cares about those things these days—and in a period when keyboards and screens can be used to create and destroy complex images at the speed of light “caring” signifies having a motive to slow down and pay close attention to the drama of form in the process of coming together or falling apart—depends on whether you think about how pictures have been conceived and made at any time in the history of Western art. Some do and some don’t. Held’s work is for those who do. Be that as it may, Held arrived at the first great turning point in his development after a long apprenticeship to Abstract-Expressionist inflected painting that encompassed dark, brooding, heavily brushed canvases made during a stint in Paris in 1950–52, materially dense but chromatically more open and expansive paintings that followed his return to New York in 1953, and on through quasi-pictographic murals of 1959–1960 such as the “Taxicab” series. All of these works were powered by gesture in the manner of that time, though Held harnessed
that gesture to muscular geometries more firmly and more vigorously than any of his peers and was among the first to let geometry itself take over the functions of self-determining composition when the arm and the wrist released their absolute authority over pictorial statement. Still, the nesting and overlapping of primary shapes—rectangles, circles, triangles and trapezoids—and the surface tensions of contrasting hues—mostly hot reds, oranges and yellows plus cool purples, blues and greens—owed more than a little of their logic to well-established modes of abstraction, in particular aspects of postwar Parisian Neo-Constructivism as practiced by Auguste Herbin and others but imbued with a manual force and optical sizzle that Herbin and his cohort rarely if ever achieved. With all this as preparation, in 1961 Held’s work pivoted on a pair of simple realizations boldly embodied on a scale grander than had ever before been attempted. The first was that drastic enlargement and cropping of the most basic elements of his imagery—a process equivalent to what was simultaneously occurring with the reiteration of advertising imagery in figurative art, notably that of billboard master turned Pop painter James Rosenquist—could simultaneously restructure and pressurize the visual field in ways that the accumulation of smaller, complete, self-contained units could not. The second was that trading in the fundamental vocabulary of Cubist and Constructivist geometry for typographic forms—a parallel option offered by both tendencies from the moment that Picasso, Braque, and so many of their contemporaries started to make collages from cut up newspapers—could lend abstraction a “ready-made” dynamism and syncopation coupled with a teasing semiotic ambiguity. Where Held most startlingly departed from precedent, was in the sheer size and sweep of the canvases in which he redeployed and radically recast these already “traditional” modernist possibilities—but then what is a tradition but the transformation of the new grown old back into the new, the unfamiliar grown familiar back into the unfamiliar? In several respects Ivan the Terrible (1961) set the mold. In this looming, top heavy, twelve foot high, nine and a half foot wide canvas two letter forms dominate; a symmetrically weighted, broad, stout black T outlined by a white band at the bottom with a skewed marigold orange X edged by maroon bands above it. Pushing out behind the X are patches of blue surround and just off-center in the middle of the composition a shard of bright yellow. Behind, or rather to the sides of the frontal white-bordered T is more dark blue, which effectively locks the figure in the lower segment of the picture into its proximate ground while setting the static but pulsing whole as a unit of form and space against the bright tilted imagery that is cut off by the upper axis of the T. As was customary for Held thick shapes are rendered in Naugahyde thick layers of acrylic paint, so that the piled up elements acquire a tactility and mass that further enhances their almost sculptural presence, a presence echoed in the roughly contemporaneous polychrome, stacked constructions of Held’s friend George Sugarman. Needless to say the difference between Held’s work and Sugarman’s is the way in which Held’s alternately dilating and contracting forms remain sandwiched one over another with no room for them to breath or inflate. In sum, Held observed the formalist rules of the road to the letter—pun intended—but kept his foot on the gas pedal without shifting gears so that one could feel the revving of his engines without his supercharged pictorial vehicle ever exceeding the speed limit or breaking free of its taut planar constraints.
In The Big A (1962) Held took more liberties, locating a huge albeit truncated and decentered A against an unmarked white ground of enormous proportions—think of a gigantic canvas tent or banner emblazoned with words of which one is seeing only a fragment—while using the blue and yellow wedge set into the black bars of the A to pry open that flat white expanse like a cut or tear offering a view to what lies outside or behind it. The moves are surprisingly subtle for a painting this large but their effect is dramatic insofar as they hint at deep spaces beyond the surface without overtly violating the “integrity of the picture plane” or depicting any circumstances that would “explain” the image in naturalistic terms. All of the areas and passages of paint may be read simply as there is no representation. And yet… The Big D (1964) exploits an alternative pictorial strategy. It is one already witnessed in action in Ivan the Terrible and at work in different ways in The Yellow X and Dowager Empress, (both 1965) the former being a variation on the upper portion of “Ivan.” However, in the The Yellow X Held is at pains to change the palette of each of the triangular notches in the central yellow field—to the left is a white strip with middle blue “behind” it, to the right an orange strip with just a fleck of green, above a deep blue strip matched with light orange, and below a green strip with a sliver of brown—so that they read as volumetric edges and planar backgrounds in relation to the X yet torque that X by putting unequal visual stress in each of the four quadrants. Combined with the notched A just described, Upside Down Triangle (1966) which reprises its composition but within a tighter frame and with a less aggressively stated central notch, plus the red orange X of Untitled (1965), which follows the example of The Yellow X and the superior portion of Ivan the Terrible but with less aggressively skewed marginal indentations these are the first intimations of the manner in which Held would subsequently crack and lever up the emphatically flat pictorial space of formalist painting of the 1950s and 1960s to expose the spatial profundities and complexities along with the Baroque sweep and spin of the armatures that had in effect been immured by modernism. During this fertile empirical interval in his career Held tested one other method for expanding the horizons of modernist abstraction—or rather of increasing the spatial stresses on its settled conventions and thus their potential impact. Because in this particular instance the device he chose was to pile imagery on in layers that filled his canvases to overflowing as if one were looking in on a huge storage locker that had been loaded to capacity by ingenious moving men. The result was a series of frontally aligned disks and rectangles that incompletely occlude one another while collectively swelling against the confining edges of the stretcher. Thus Dowager Empress (1965) and Echo (1966) play on carefully calibrated superposition and crowding, while Mao (1967), the capstone of this subset of the “Letter Paintings,” adds concentricity to the mix, creating an image of vertiginous nuance that is at the same time stunningly dense and confrontational. But as the “Letter Paintings” demonstrated Held was not yet done with modernism himself, and it was not yet done with him. The concept of the thoroughly integrated pictorial Gestalt promoted by Frank Stella among others during the early 1960s registered with Held as well. In essence the notion was that composition as it had been traditionally understood in both figurative and abstract art was an anachronism. No more balancing “this” against “that,” a triangle against a circle—done vertically in Triangle Circle (1963) and horizontally on an heroic scale in
Circle and Triangle (1964)—or even a square against a square as Piet Mondrian had done hundreds of times to create what he called dynamic equilibrium. Henceforth painting was to be a whole of inseparable if not indistinguishable parts rather than the elegantly arranged sum of disparate elements. Accordingly Held proceeded to produce quite a few canvases in which the overall image hit before the component parts could be read as independent units although in character with his basically contrarian aesthetic nature Held introduced as many eccentricities as the idea of a instantly perceptible Gestalt could permit. The simplest example, although not the first, is The “I” (1965) in which the capitalized letter form fills the vertical rectangle of the support but for two white bands on either side. At nine feet in height, the proportions of the canvases slyly aggrandize the first person singular declaration of the painter’s identification with the painting as inherited from Abstract Expressionism, while offering a painterly riposte to Robert Morris’s iconic Neo-Dada, arguably anti-painting I-Box of 1962. Maltese Cross (1964) preceded The “I,” and it too fundamentally satisfies the requirements of a Gestalt image in that one “sees it all at once.” However, with the intricate black contours of the cross and the filling of four slots with yellow rectangles it retains a compositional complexity that stretches the limits of the unitary image from inside the boundaries of an otherwise fully symmetrical field. With the color shift on the lower right hand side of the likewise cruciform Untitled (1964) Held introduces overt asymmetry. The basic L structures of Siegfried (1966) forcefully imply symmetry but the unequal width of the horizontal bars subverts that initial expectation causing the overall image to fluctuate in the eye, transforming the whole into an unstable entity in which the parts subvert a wholeness they at first seemed to assert. The de-centered angles of Acracropolis (1966) and Bastion (1967) do much the same even as they imprint themselves uncertainly on the retina like Gestalt’s with mischief on their mind. Which brings us to The Big “N” (1964–66) the undisputable masterpiece of this period in Held’s life and one of the most memorable images he ever made. Here the letter-form upon which the painting is focused has been dilated to a point where only proportionally small triangles at the top and bottom interrupt the tactilely rich blankness of the enormous white square, with the uppermost triangle being accented by an even more understated shard of yellow. The wonder of this painting is precisely the manner in which it simultaneously imposes its Gestalt-like pictorial cohesion and its energizing anomalies, its nearly inscrutable sign value and its non-objective formality. In sum, it crystallizes ambitions for abstraction that extend from gestural physicality to minimal modularity, from pictorialism to thingness. Why should any of this matter now? Because abstraction is at once a century old, and a century young. More significantly, it is at long last free of the teleological imperatives, ideological taboos and historicist superstitions that conditioned its origination and development as a separate strain in Western art, a story synoptically told in the current exhibition at the Museum Modern Art, “Inventing Abstraction 1910–1925” organized by Leah Dickerman. Indeed the cropped cover image from that catalog shows a work by Liubov Popova titled Painterly Architectonic (1917) that vividly foreshadows Held's frontal stacking of imagery, reminding us that abstract artists of the midtwentieth century OFTEN made their mark not by breakthroughs predicated on categorically “new” options but by
fresh ways of addressing possibilities that were implicit in abstract art from the very start. Moreover, as we survey painting production in the second decade of the twenty-first century we see all around us ingenious reiterations and transformations of ideas that have lingered in partially exploited states from the time abstraction began one hundred years ago. Twenty or thirty years back these works would most likely have deployed direct quotation or been executed with obvious, self-protective stylistic irony based on an academic hypersensitivity to precedent and potential critique. Lately younger artists seem more willing just to go at it and see what can still be done to make a compelling, straightforward image, one capable of standing on its own under the gaze of a sophisticated viewer who knows the history of the medium but is more concerned with the present than the past, with the immediacy of their own experience than with the second-guessing of scholastic commentators. When Held set out to make his own work he certainly heard the talkers talking, talking of the beginning and of the end—to paraphrase Walt Whitman that great anti-skeptical poet of American possibility—and he was a champion talker himself. Above all, though, Held was a maker, a painter. In the final analysis the only argument that could possibly sway him, the only one to which he would ever yield, was an argument made by a brush. That is as good a test now as ever, and Held’s art is among the very best demonstrations of how it works, and so among the best places to start rethinking the prospects for abstraction now that we are free do so, now that we have nothing to lose and worlds to gain.
Ivan the Terrible 1961 acrylic on canvas 144 x 114 in 365.8 x 289.6 cm
The Big A 1962 acrylic on canvas 120 x 168 in 304.8 x 426.7 cm Collection Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Triangle Circle 1963 acrylic on canvas 59 3/4 x 41 3/4 in 151.8 x 106 cm Collection University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach
Circle and Triangle 1964 acrylic on canvas 144 x 336 in 365.8 x 853.4 cm
Maltese Cross 1964 acrylic on canvas 114 x 114 in 289.6 x 289.6 cm Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York
Red Gull 1964 acrylic on canvas 96 x 72 in 243.8 x 182.9 cm
The Big D 1964 acrylic on canvas 144 x 114 in 365.8 x 289.6 cm
The "I" 1965 acrylic on canvas 108 x 76 in 274.3 x 193 cm
Untitled 1964 acrylic on canvas 76 x 118 1/2 in 193 x 301 cm Collection Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
The Dowager Empress 1965 acrylic on canvas 96 x 71 1/2 in 243.8 x 181.6 cm Collection Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The Yellow X 1965 acrylic on canvas 90 x 144 in 228.6 x 365.8 cm
Untitled 1965 acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 in 91.4 x 91.4 cm Collection Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Acracropolis 1966 acrylic on canvas 84 x 72 in 213.4 x 182.9 cm
Echo 1966 acrylic on canvas 84 x 72 in 213.4 x 182.9 cm
Siegfried 1966 acrylic on canvas 114 x 192 in 289.6 x 487.7 cm
Thalocropolis 1966 acrylic on canvas 84 x 72 in 213.4 x 182.9 cm
Upside Down Triangle 1966 acrylic on canvas 114 x 168 in 289.6 x 426.7 cm
Bastion 1967 acrylic on canvas 114 x 114 in 289.6 x 289.6 cm Collection Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Mao 1967 acrylic on canvas 114 x 114 in 289.6 x 289.6 cm Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Big N 1964–66 acrylic on canvas 108 3/4 x 108 in 276.2 x 274.3 cm
BIOGRAPHY 1928 Born October 12, Brooklyn, New York 2005 Died July 27, Camerata, Italy
EDUCATION 1950–53 Studies at the Academié de la Grande Chaumièrie, Paris
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1952 Galerie Huit, Paris 1959 Poindexter Gallery, New York 1960 Poindexter Gallery, New York 1961 Al Held. Galería Bonino, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Poindexter Gallery, New York
1962 Poindexter Gallery, New York 1964 Bilder. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zurich
Galerie Gunar, Düsseldorf
1965 André Emmerich Gallery, New York 1966 Galerie Müller, Stuttgart
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
1967 Al Held’s Studio, New York
André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Bilder. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zurich
1968 San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco; traveled to Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Al Held: Recent Paintings. Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia;
traveled to Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
1970 Al Held: New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Bilder. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zurich
1971 Al Held: Recent Paintings. Donald Morris Gallery, Detroit, Michigan 1972 Al Held: New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York 1973 Al Held: New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York 1974 Galerie André Emmerich, Zurich
Al Held: Recent Paintings and Drawings. Donald Morris Gallery, Detroit, Michigan
Al Held. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Galerie Müller, Cologne
1975 Al Held: Drawings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Jared Sable Gallery, Toronto
Al Held. Adler Castillo Gallery, Caracas, Venezuela
Al Held: New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
1976 André Emmerich Gallery, New York 1977 Al Held: Neue Bilder und Zeichnungen/Recent Paintings and Drawings. Galerie André Emmerich, Zurich
Al Held: Fürhe Werke/Early Works. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zurich
Al Held: New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Al Held: Paintings and Drawings. Annely Juda Fine Art, London
Al Held. Donald Morris Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan
Al Held. Galerie Roger d'Amecourt, Paris
1978 Al Held: Paintings and Drawings 1973–1978. Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Al Held: New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Drawings By Al Held. Mariannne Friedland Gallery, Toronto
Al Held: Drawings 1959–1976. Janus Gallery, Venice, California
1979 André Emmerich Gallery, New York 1980 Al Held: Neue Bilder/Recent Paintings. Gimpel-Hanover & Galerie André Emmerich, Zurich
Al Held 1959–1961. Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Al Held: Recent Paintings. Annely Juda Fine Art, London
Al Held: Recent Paintings. Quadrat Bottrop Moderne Galerie, Bottrop, Germany
Al Held: New Paintings 1980. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
1981 Gimpel-Hanover & Galerie André Emmerich, Zurich
Grand Palais, Paris, FIAC (Foire Internationale d'Art Contemporain) exhibition with André Emmerich Gallery
1982 Al Held: Recent Paintings. Juda Rowan Gallery, London
Al Held: 1954–1959. Robert Miller Gallery, New York
André Emmerich Gallery, New York
The American Academy in Rome
1983 Al Held: New Paintings. Donald Morris Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan
Al Held: New Editions, Stone Ridge. Pace Editions, New York
1984 Al Held: Zeichnungen von 1976. Gimpel-Hanover & Galerie André Emmerich, Zurich; traveled to André
Emmerich Gallery, New York
Al Held: Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Al Held: Major Paintings. Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago
Major Paintings and Works on Paper. Marianne Friedland Gallery, Toronto
1985 Al Held. André Emmerich, New York
Al Held: New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
1986 John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
Al Held Drawings, Hudson River Museum, (traveling exhibition)
André Emmerich Gallery, New York
1987 Al Held: Drawings. Juda Rowan Gallery, London
Taxi Cabs 1959. Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Zeichnungen. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zurich
Al Held New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
1988 Al Held New Paintings. Donald Morris Gallery, Inc., Birmingham, Michigan
Al Held Watercolors. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
1989 Al Held New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Al Held: Recent Paintings. John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
Al Held Watercolours 1989. Marianne Friedland Gallery, Toronto
Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zurich
1990 Al Held: After Paris, 1953–1955. Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Al Held Arbeiten von 1989. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zurich
Al Held: Neue Arbeiten. Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf
Al Held: New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Al Held: Etchings and Color Woodblock Prints. Crown Point Press, New York
1991 Al Held: Paintings 1990. Heland Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm
Al Held “The Italian Watercolors.” André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Harry, If I Told You, Would You Know? André Emmerich Gallery/Galbreath Co. storefront 57th Street,
New York
1992 Al Held. Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas
Al Held Paintings and Works on Paper. Allene Lapides Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Al Held: New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Hokin Gallery, Bar Harbor Islands, Florida
1993 Al Held Etchings. Crown Point Press, New York
Al Held: Watercolors and Acrylics. Landau Fine Art, Montreal
Al Held: Italian Watercolors. Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign; traveled to Adams Landing Contemporary Art Space, Cincinnati; Cedar Rapids Museum
of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
1994 Al Held: Painting in Paris 1952. Robert Miller Gallery, New York 1995 Al Held: Time Past-Time Future. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Geometric Abstraction. Allene Lapides Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
1996 Al Held: Aquarelle. Hans Strelow, Dusseldorf
Al Held: Graphite/Charcoal Drawings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
1997 Al Held Recent Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York 1998 Al Held (The Last Series: 1964–65). Robert Miller Gallery, New York 1999 Al Held. Dorothy Blau Gallery, Inc., Bay Harbor Islands, Florida 2000 Al Held: Unfolding. Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Al Held: The Italian Watercolors. Ameringer/Howard Fine Art, Inc., Boca Raton, Florida
2001 Al Held: Large-Scale Watercolor Paintings. Pillsbury and Peters Fine Art, Ltd., Dallas; traveled to Gerald
Peters Gallery, Santa Fe
Al Held in Black and White: Paintings and Works on Paper. Ameringer/Howard/Yohe, New York
2002 Expanding Universe: The Recent Paintings of Al Held. Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; traveled
to Dennos Museum Center, Northwestern Michigan College, Traverse City; Douglas F. Cooley Memorial
Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland; The Butler Institute of American Art Youngstown, Ohio; Boston
University Art Gallery, Boston University, Boston; University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, Maine
2003 Al Held: Beyond Sense. Robert Miller Gallery, New York 2005 Al Held: Public Projects. Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Art in Architecture: Al Held. Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida
Al Held: Public Art. Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida
2006 Al Held: American Abstract Expressionist Painter, 1928–2005. J. Johnson Gallery
In Memory of Al Held 1928–2005. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zurich
The Watercolors of Al Held. Marianne Friedland Gallery, Naples, Florida
2007 Al Held: Gravity’s Strings. Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida 2008 Al Held: The Watercolor Paintings. Marianne Friedland Gallery, Naples, Florida
Al Held: The Evolution of Style. University Art Museum, Long Beach, California
Al Held: Watercolors. John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
Al Held Paintings 1979–1993. Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York
Al Held Paintings 1979–1993. Waddington Galleries, London
2009 Al Held Prints 1973–1999. Pace Prints Gallery, New York 2010 Al Held: Selected Works. Marianne Friedland Gallery, Naples, Florida
Al Held: Concrete Abstraction. Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe, New York
2011 Al Held Paintings 1959. Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York 2012 Pace Prints 26th Street (project room), New York
Al Held: Space, Scale and Time. Marianne Friedland Gallery, Naples, Florida
Al Held: Black and White 1967. Loretta Howard Gallery, New York
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 1955 Tanager Gallery, New York 1956 Donald Berry/Al Held Paintings. Poindexter Gallery, New York
Brata Gallery, New York
1957 Brata Gallery, New York
Tanager Gallery, New York
1959 Neue Amerikanische Malerei. Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen, Switzerland 1961 1961. Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art, Dallas
American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
New York Scene. Marlborough Gallery, London; traveled to Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
The 1961 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture. The Carnegie
Institute, Pittsburgh
1962 Geometric Abstraction in America. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Twenty-Eighth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting. Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.
1963 Toward a New Abstraction. The Jewish Museum of New York, New York
Annual Exhibition 1963–Contemporary American Painting. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Banners. Graham Gallery, New York
1964 1964 Annual Exhibition Contemporary Art. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
67th Annual American Exhibition: Directions in Contemporary Painting and Sculpture. Art Institute of
Chicago, Chicago
Abstract Watercolors by 14 Americans. American Embassy, London. Organized by the Museum of Modern
Art, New York
Post Painterly Abstraction. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; traveled to Walker Art
Center, Minneapolis; The Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto
1965 Held, Kelly, MattmĂźller, Noland, Olitski, Pfahler, Plumb, Turnbull. Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland
1965 Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Painting. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Sammlung La Peau de L 'Ours. Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland
Signale. Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland 1966 Two Decades of American Painting. National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (organized by the International
Council of the Museum of Modern Art, New York); traveled to Kyoto, Japan; Lalit Kala Akademi, New
Delhi; Melbourne and Sydney, Australia
Vormen van de Kleur. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; traveled to Württembergischer Kunstverein,
Stuttgart, Germany; Kunsthalle, Bern, Switzerland
American Schilderijen Collages. Museum Voor Stad en Lande, Groningen, The Netherlands
Art of the United States: 1670–1966. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Systemic Paintings. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
1967 1967 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Large Scale American Paintings. The Jewish Museum, New York
Frank O’Hara: In Memory of My Feelings. Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Visual Assault. Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia
1968 Signal in the Sixties. Honolulu Academy of Arts, Hawaii
In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Pure and Clear: American Innovations. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
Documenta IV. Kassel, Germany
1969 29th Exhibition by the Society for Contemporary Art. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
1969 Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Painting. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
1970 American Painting 1970. The Virginia Museum, Richmond, Virginia
Contemporary Art from Dayton Collections. Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio
Exhibition of Contemporary Art–1970. Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas
1973 1973 Biennial Exhibition: Contemporary American Art. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 1974 1961: American Painting in the Watershed Year. Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York 1975 34th Biennial of Contemporary American Painting. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
76 Jefferson: Fall Penthouse Art Lending Service Exhibition. Museum of Modern Art, New York
Color. Museo De Arte Moderno, Bogota, Columbia; traveled to Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas,
Venezuela; Museum of Modern Art, New York
American Abstract Art. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
American Works on Paper 1945–1975. M. Knoedler & Co., New York
1976 A Selection of American Art: The Skowhegan School 1946–1976. Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston;
traveled to Colby Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine
Surface, Edge and Color. Whitney Museum of American Art, Downtown Branch, New York
1977 Documenta VI. Kassel, Germany
A View of a Decade. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Artists Salute Skowhegan. Kennedy Galleries, New York
1978 Recent Acquisitions: Painting and Sculpture. Museum of Modern Art, New York
American Painting of the 1970’s. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; traveled to Newport Harbor Art
Museum, California; The Oakland Museum, Oakland, California; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati;
Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign
1979 Art Inc.: American Paintings from Corporate Collections. Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery,
Alabama; traveled to Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Indianapolis Museum of Art,
Indianapolis; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego
The 1970s: New American Painting. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (exhibition
sponsored by the United States Information Agency [USIA]; traveled to venues in Belgrade; Budapest;
Bucharest; Zagreb; Ljubljana; Rome; Copenhagen; Warsaw)
1980 L'Amerique aux Independants 1944–1980. Grand Palais des Champs-Elysees, 91eme Exposition, Societe
des Artistes Independants, Paris
The Geometric Tradition in American Painting: 1920–1980. Rosa Esman and Marilyn Pearl Galleries, New York
Art in Our Time. Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee (from the collection of the HHK Foundation
for Contemporary Art, Inc.); traveled to Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Columbus Museum of
Art, Columbus, Ohio; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Krannert Art Museum, University of
Illinois, Champaign; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa
City; Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee; University Art Museum, University of Texas
at Austin, Austin
American Drawings in Black and White 1970–1980. The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn
From Matisse to American Abstract Painting. Washburn Gallery, New York
1981 1981 Biennial Exhibition. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Color, Surface and Geometry: American Painting of the 1940s and 1950s. Marilyn Pearl Gallery, New York
Amerikanische Malerei: 1930–1980. Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany
1982 A Private Vision: Contemporary Art from the Graham Gund Collection. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Surveying the Seventies. Whitney Museum of American Art, Stamford, Connecticut
American Artists Abroad 1900–1950. Washburn Gallery, New York
Black and White. Museum of Modem Art, New York; traveled to Freeport-McMoran Company, New York
1983 The 60s in Painting, Sculpture, Video, Film, Music, Photography, Fashion. P.S. 1, Long Island City, New York.
Language, Drama, Source & Vision. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
Minimalism to Expressionism: Painting and Sculpture Since 1965 from the Permanent Collection. Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York
1984 American Art Since 1970. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; travelled to La Jolla Museum of
Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; North Carolina Museum of Art,
Raleigh; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Center for the Fine Arts, Miami
American Post War Purism. Marilyn Pearl Gallery, New York
1985 Action/Precision: 1980–85. Washburn Gallery, New York
The Bronx Celebrates. Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, New York
Geometric Abstraction: Selections from a Decade, 1975–1985. The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, New York
Contrasts of Form: Geometric Abstract Art 1910–1985. Museum of Modem Art, New York
1986 An American Renaissance: Painting and Sculpture Since 1940. Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Large Drawings. Museum of Modern Art, New York
Twentieth-Century American Art. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York at Equitable Center, New York
After Matisse. Queens Museum, Flushing, New York (organized and circulated by Independent Curators
Incorporated, New York); traveled to Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia; Portland Museum of Art
Portland, Maine; Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, Florida; The Phillips Collection, Washington,
D.C. ; Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts
Seven American Masters. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Boston Collects, Contemporary Painting and Sculpture. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
1987 1967: At the Crossroads. Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Generations of Geometry. Whitney Museum of American Art at Equitable Center, New York
Strong Statements in Black and White. James Goodman Gallery, New York
1988 Selected Works. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
The Non-Objective World Revisited. Annely Juda Fine Art, London
Works on Paper. John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
25 Years: Crown Point Press. Museum of Modern Art, New York
1989 Ronald Bladen: The 1950s. Washburn Gallery, New York
Seven Abstract Paintings. John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
Selected Works II. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Art in Place: Fifteen Years of Acquisitions, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Abstract Expressionism. Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles
1990 The Great Decade: The 1960s, A Selection of Paintings and Sculpture. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
The Humanist Icon. The New York Academy of Art, New York
Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Galleries: Reinstallation. Museum of Modern Art, New York
1992 Al Held, Milton Resnick 1955–1965. Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles
Not for Sale: Loans from the Private Collection of New York Art Dealers. Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv
Al Held, Romare Bearden. Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas
Contemporary American Painting & Sculpture. American Embassy, Tel Aviv. Curated by Louise Eliasof,
André Emmerich Gallery and Renee Harrison, U.S. Department of State, Art & Embassies Program
1993 Abstract-Figurative. Robert Miller Gallery, New York
The Usual Suspects. Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles
Spheres of Influence. Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, Stamford, Connecticut
Geometric Abstractions. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
1995 Abstraction, Pure and Impure. Museum of Modern Art, New York 1996 Thinking Print: Books to Billboards, 1980–1995. Museum of Modem Art, New York
Abstract Expressionism in the United States. Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City
New Visions. André Emmerich Gallery, New York
1997 Thirty-five Years at Crown Point Press. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; traveled to Fine Arts
Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco
Abstract Expressionism in the United States. Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City
1998 Defining Structures. LaSalle Partners at Nations Bank Plaza, Charlotte, North Carolina
Abstracted Presence. Edward Thorp Gallery, New York
1999 Abstractions Americaines 1940–1960. Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France
Alchemies of the Sixties From the Rose Art Museum Permanent Collection. The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis
University, Waltham, Massachusetts
The American Century: Art & Culture 1950–2000. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
2001 A Defining Generation. Then and Now: 1961 and 2001. The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University,
Waltham, Massachusetts
Watercolor: In the Abstract. The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York; traveled to Michael C.
Rockefeller Arts Center Gallery, State University College, Fredonia, New York; Butler Institute of
American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Ben Shahn Gallery, William Patterson University, Wayne, New Jersey;
Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, University of Alabama, Tuscalossa
2002 New York Renaissance: Masterworks from the Whitney Museum of American Art. Palazzo Reale, Milan
Plane: The Essential of Painting. P.S. 1 MoMA, Long Island City, New York
2003 Masterworks. Joan T. Washburn Gallery, New York
2004 Ground-Field-Surface. Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Kleinformate und Originalgraphik. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zurich
2005 American Masters: Important Paintings and Works on Paper. Marianne Friedland Gallery, Naples, Florida 2006 Berlin-Tokyo/Tokyo-Berlin. Die Kunstzweier Städte. Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Pre-Post. Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York
2007 Grand Gestures: The Gordon F. Hampton Collection. California State University, University Art Museum,
Long Beach, California
What is Painting? Contemporary Art from the Collection. Museum of Modern Art, New York
Summer Show. John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
Full Color: Painting and Sculpture from 1960–1980. Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York
Americans in Paris: Abstract Paintings in the Fifties. Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York
Modern and Contemporary Masterworks. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
2008 Arp to Reinhardt: Rose Geometries. The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts
Sensory Overload: Light, Motion, Sound and the Optical in Art Since 1945. Milwaukee Art Museum
From Picasso to Warhol. The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
Fernand Leger: Paris-New York. Foundation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland
2009 Pop to Present. Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California
A Matter of Form. John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
Five Decades. Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York
New Works: Highlights from the Permanent Collection. Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas
2010 Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art Since the 1960s. San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas;
traveled to Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York; Telfair Museum of Art,
Savannah, Georgia
Pictures About Pictures: Discourses in Painting from Albers to Zobernig. Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria
Group Show: Process/Abstraction Continued. Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York
Abstract USA 1958–1968. Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Long Term Loan, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen-Basel, Switzerland
2011 New Colors: Selections from the Kemp Collection, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
Painterly Abstraction, 1949–1969: Selections from the Guggenheim Collections. Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain
Forms of the Fifties: Tendencies in Mid-Century Fine and Decorative Arts. James Reinish & Assoc., Inc., New York
2012 Il Guggenheim, L’avanguardia Americana 1945–1980. Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome
Ronald Bladen in Context: Works on Paper by Fellow Sculptors. Loretta Howard Gallery, New York
Abstract Drawings. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
The Artist’s Hand: American Works on Paper 1945–1975. Museum of Art, Washington State University,
Pullman, Washington
The Geometric Unconscious: A Century of Abstraction. Sheldon Art Museum, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
TEACHING 1962–80
Yale University, Associate Professor of Art
AWARDS 1964 Receives Logan Medal by the Art Institute of Chicago 1966 Receives Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting 1983 Receives Jack I. and Lillian L. Poses Creative Arts Award, Painting Medal, Brandeis University 1984 Member, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Art Department, New York 2008 America’s Best Public Art Projects (2008 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention)
PUBLIC ART/COMMISSIONS 1967 Cleveland, Ohio, Tower East: I and We, diptych, 9 x 21 feet each 1970 Albany, New York, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza: Rothko’s Canvas, 10 x 90 feet 1977 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Social Security Administration's Mid-Atlantic Program Center: Order/ Disorder/Ascension/Descension, diptych, 13 x 180 feet 1983 Dallas, Texas, Southland Center Lobby: Mantegna's Edge, 14 x 53 feet (subsequently moved to the Boca
Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida)
1985 Akron, Ohio, Government Building: Roberta's House, 10 x 43 feet 1996 Washington, D.C., Ronald Reagan National Airport: Gravity's Rainbow, stained glass window, 2 x 400
feet, in two sections
2003 New York, Metropolitan Transit Authority, 53rd Street/Lexington Avenue Subway Station: Passing Through, Glass Mosaic Wall, 200 feet in two sections 2006 Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville Library: Untitled, 9 1/2 x 60 feet 2007 Orlando, Florida, Art in Architecture United States Federal Courthouse: Untitled, six stained glass
windows, one 50 x 20 feet and five 11 x 2 feet each
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Akron Art Institute, Ohio Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois Australian National Gallery, Canberra Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin The Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison Public Library, City of Cerritos, California Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine Corcoran Gallery of Art, College of Art + Design, Washington, D.C. Daimler Art Collection, Stuttgart, Germany Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Texas Dayton Art Institute, Ohio Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington The Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York De Young Museum, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Gallery of Modern Art, Iwaki City, Japan Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri Kunsthaus, Zurich
Kunstmuseum, Basel Maslow Collection, Marywood University, Scranton, Pennsylvania The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Milwaukee Art Center, Wisconsin Montana Historical Society, Butte The Morgan Library & Museum, New York The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Modern Art, New York National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin Newark Museum of Art, New Jersey Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California Sheldon Art Gallery, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Tate Gallery, London The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, Maine The University of California at Long Beach The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Front cover: Untitled, c. 1964, graphite on paper, 11 7/8 x 9 in. Back cover: Untitled, c. 1965, graphite on paper, 11 7/8 x 9 in. Opposite title page: Al Held in his Fifth Avenue studio, 1966. Photo: André Emmerich. Pages 50-51: Al Held in his Fifth Avenue studio with Circle and Triangle, April 1964. Photo: Manfred Tischler. Bastion, 1967, Albright-Knox Art Gallery/Art Resource, New York. Gift of the artist, 1986. Circle and Triangle, 1964, Private Collection. Photo: Chris Burke. Ivan the Terrible, 1961, Private Collection. Photo: Chris Burke. Maltese Cross, 1964, Digital Image ©The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York. Lita Hornick Bequest. Mao, 1967, Digital Image ©The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York. The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection. Siegfried, 1966, Private Collection. Photo: Chris Burke. The Big A, 1962, bpk, Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin/Art Resource, New York. Photo: Jörg P. Anders. The Big D, 1964, Private Collection. Photo: Chris Burke. The Big N, 1964-66, Digital Image ©The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York. Mrs. Armand P. Bartos Fund. The Dowager Empress, 1965, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Purchased with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 66.3. Photo: Bill Orcutt. The “I”, 1965, Private Collection. Photo: Chris Burke. The Yellow X, 1965, Private Collection. Photo: Chris Burke. Triangle Circle, 1963, University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach. Gift of the Gordon F. Hampton Foundation, through Wesley G. Hampton, Roger K. Hampton, and Katharine H. Shenk. Untitled, 1964, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, Gift of Phil and Terri Schrager. Untitled, 1965. Digital Image ©Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Gift of Alex Katz. All other images, photo: Chris Burke.
P r in t e d i n a n editio n o f 1 ,5 0 0 o n t h e o c ca sion of the 2 0 1 3 exhibitio n
Al Held Alphabet Paintings Design John Cheim Essay Robert Storr Editor Ellen Robinson ISBN 978-0-9851410-7-3 Printed In The United States By GHP Media We are very grateful for the efforts of Gene Benson, Chad Ferber, Abbey Green, Mara Held and the Board of the Al Held Foundation.
Al Held CHEIM
held cover 2-18-13 copy.indd 2
1961-1967
& RE A D
CHEIM & RE A D
Al Held Alphabet Paintings
2/20/13 1:23 PM