Al Held: Black and White Paintings 1967−1969

Al Held Black and White Paintings 1967–1969

held cover 1-18-16.indd 1

CHEIM & RE A D

CHEIM & RE A D

Al Held

Black and White Paintings 1967–1969 2/17/16 4:19 PM

Al Held

BLACK AND WHITE PAINTINGS

1967–1969

CHEIM & RE AD NE W YORK

Al Held’s Cognitive Abstraction A L EX B A C O N In 1967 Al Held made a major, and abrupt, break with his existing painting practice. He gave up the strident colors and bold, minimal, typographic forms that had dominated his work since 1960 for paintings comprised of a complex interweaving of black linear, planar, geometric forms on a dense white ground. Held had grown tired of the Modernist insistence on the flatness supposedly inherent to the picture plane and the attendant dogma that it should not be violated with any suggestion of illusory depth.1 However, by rendering shapes in perspective, Held did not so much want to go against the fundamental two-dimensionality of the pictorial image, as suggest alternate ways to interpret it. He did so by rendering the spatial logic of his forms more complex and even contradictory, which Held felt was in keeping with the tenor of the realities of life in that moment. This kept his art in step with broader developments in art of the late 1960s, as other artists also sought to investigate the idiosyncrasies and complexities of perception.2

Held was suspicious of any formal outlook that suggested—as, in Held’s eyes, Minimalism did—the possibility of direct, unmediated access to space and bodies. This sentiment likely also precipitated Held’s break with what he described as his “reductive” paintings of the early and mid-1960s. As Held told James Faure Walker, “I strived to go from the general to the specific. My feeling about other minimal work is that they really went the opposite way, from the specific to the general.”3 Instead he wanted to retain something of the complexity of life as it is lived on an everyday level, explaining to Dore Ashton: “I build up a rapport with [the paintings]. They sometimes even take on aspects of personalities, presences and things.”4 Extending from this Held hoped that he was “able to somehow create a situation where [there’s a] dialogue between the painting and the act of looking at the painting.”5

Held’s black-and white-paintings appear simple enough on first glance. From a distance it is possible to think that these are flat, graphic line drawings very much in the legacy of

the interchanging monochromatic shapes of Analytic Cubism and the packed, clustered forms of Fernand Léger. Yet, even at this remove, the painting begins to alter our perception as the linear lattice Held has fashioned begins to pulsate. Consider for example the pop and lock dance of the rectangular forms in B/W XIV, 1969 (plate 8). These box-like shapes populate the space of the canvas to such a degree that they seem to flow in and out of it on all four sides. The forms that have been isolated by this 96-inch square frame flicker not only because of their multitude—too much to hold in the eye at any one time—but also because different figures are rendered in varied, and sometimes conflicting, perspectival registers.

Held introduced this kind of optically aggressive frontal projection in the preceding series of alphabet paintings, and this is no doubt why artist-critic Scott Burton described Held’s work, with specific reference to the seminal transitional canvas Mao, 1967, which was painted at the same time as the first black-and-white paintings, thus: “The vestigial yellow field, shoved into the corners, starts the rolling, in an aggressing series of big and little bounces, out at you, until your reaction is finally to duck.”6

It is not—to take one example—simply that the box-like shape at the upper left of Phoenicia VII, 1969 (plate 12) seems to be floating up over our heads, or that the large form towards the canvas’s center seems to roll out in our direction, but also that the form at lower right seems like it could be a building below us that we are passing over, as if by airplane. This causes us to retrospectively revise our reading of the other forms. Perhaps they are seen from the top down as well? The truth is that it is not determinable exactly where any of Held’s forms lie, despite the deceptive simplicity of his “rudimentary” geometric language of rectangles, squares, and curves. We find that they seem to take on different qualities depending on our perspective, both physical and intellectual. For example, there is a speed and motion that the lower central form in B/W XI, 1968 (plate 6) takes on if it is seen as lying in traditional one-point perspective, but which is almost entirely absent if we consider our viewpoint, as we logically also might, to be a topographic looking down, which gives that form a solidity and stasis that it otherwise lacks. So then part of the optical effect of these paintings is due to their refusal of definitiveness and our brain’s consequent inability to settle on any one way of looking.

This interest in making complexity an essential part of the paintings is not limited to their conception, and to the visual effect of the works as they are beheld. Even more important for Held is that it translate into the particular nature and duration of the viewer’s perception of the work. He wanted the attentive, focused, and sympathetic viewer to allow him or herself time for the complexities and contradictions to unfold, and to subsequently test and assess them. Held thus hoped that the viewer would not simply let the painting wash over him or her, but rather that he or she would take the time to investigate, for example, the orientation of the rectangle in the lower center of Esopus I, 1969 (plate 11) against that of the curve to its left, which feels as if it is in another perspectival register entirely. To think about what it means that the relationship between them feels as if it is in perpetual flux and caught up in a process of becoming. This is further underscored by forms in parts of paintings that do not cohere, even internally, to any single organizing order. For example, the way that the lines in certain shapes in B/W VI, 1967 (plate 2) are not parallel to one another, or the impossible overlapping in the upper left corner of B/W V, 1967–1968 (plate 1).

We all know what rectangles, circles, and squares look like, and how they function in the world. Thus, when they are manipulated by Held—pushed through odd perspectives and tilted at enigmatic angles—we each have our lived experience to draw from when we assess them. Thus there is a democracy to Held’s pictorial vocabulary, even as Held challenges and pushes us to go further. But even in this striving to engage us, Held is not inciting us to improve or update our sensorium to better sync with an accelerated moment (technologically or otherwise), as certain artists of the historical avant-garde did. Instead, he is asking us to consider and examine our existing faculties, and thus to deconstruct the deeper meanings and possibilities embedded in them. His work suggests an inward turning rather than a public expansion of a unified, expanded sensorium. There is thus a philosophical outlook in these works in the way that they suggest that we examine the complex inner life that we all have, and which is unique to every individual, as well as our cognitive capacity to deal with the outside world, which we are better equipped to move through after engaging in the penetrating self-analysis that Held’s paintings prompt at a physiological level. As Held shared with Walker:

My paintings come out of the nervousness of not knowing what was true, painting

and painting and painting on the same painting until I could become convinced that

at least through the metamorphosis of the activity I began to believe in that form,

that object. I got hooked on each painting for a very long time. Looking back on it, it

was like self-hypnosis.7

In this way Held imbued the very process of his paintings with the temporality of making, and this was purposeful. Held has described his process as such: “The paintings are constructed, step by step, so what happens is that I put one color down, then another color and I construct; the work is built like this step after step after step…I want to allow the painting the freedom to evolve.”8 In the black-and-white paintings the different stages of the work’s genesis are left in, such that the ghosts of past compositions accumulate into a palimpsest.9 The viewer can quite literally sense the amount of labor Held put into a given painting, as it projects outward towards them with a geologic layering of dense impasto that is at odds with the linear graphic quality of the brushed forms.

Further, by leaving visible certain of the different painterly paths aborted or not pursued, Held revokes any sense of his works as being masterful, perfect, or finalized, but rather asserts that they are the result of a long, hard-won process of intuition, failure and indecision. In this way, Held’s black-and-white paintings can be seen as paralleling the nature of cognitive functioning, both in their making and in the viewer’s experience with them. By being led through some of the history that brought about the final composition we are able to consider alternative forms the painting might have taken, and also to gauge Held’s reasoning for certain of the edits and adjustments he has made.

This is in keeping with the parameters that Held constructed for this cognitive element, which he dubs intellectual. It is very specifically painterly, dealing with the vocabulary of painting’s recent and distant past. It does so not only in its reference to the flatness that Modernism had been obsessed with, especially in its postwar American iteration, and the geometric language of abstract art, but also in its engagement with conceptions of pictorial space that have preoccupied every generation of painters, not only the theoreticians of Renaissance Italy who “invented” perspective.

Indeed, we might understand one of the most innovative aspects of Held’s black-and-white paintings to be how they introduce a new spatial relationship, and relationship is the key word here. For they do not simply reject the perspectival past of post-Renaissance Western art, they update painterly spatial logics for the 1960s. We can think of Erwin Panofsky’s well-known research into how perspective is neither the only, nor the “best” spatial logic Western art has introduced, but rather simply one episode in the historical lineage of spatial paradigms.10 It is understandable, then, that by the 1960s there would be new ways of understanding, and thus rendering space.

The 1960s were in fact one of the biggest moments of scientific research into spatial perception since the origins of perceptual psychology in the mid-to-late-19th century. More specifically, one of the major assertions of scientific research in this period, which was widely discussed in the popular science press, and from there accessed and taken up by artists, was the conception of space as consisting, not of an envelope containing objects and persons, but rather as constructed and made sensible only through relationships among and between objects and people. Which is an idea that was of great import to Held, who shared with Peter Townsend: “I’ve gotten very intrigued with the notion that there is no such thing as space that space is really made up of events, energies, marked forms that are relation[al] to one another.”11 This idea is premised on the recognition that perception, while based on biological cues, is conditioned culturally, socially and historically. To use an example given by Held: “You can stand on a hill-side and watch a sunset. The information we believe in tells us the sun really isn’t setting. We’re really standing on a point and the earth is revolving away from the sun, yet our senses are telling us the sun is setting.”12 Physiological constructions such as this color how we see things, which is not “as they actually are” but by our best guess based on the sensory information we are presented with. For this reason we are often forced to reassess what we see.

Held was aware of this, querying Townsend: “What is the nature of perception? Is the nature of perception what you really see[?] How do you know what you are seeing is not just bad old habits.”13 It is this aspect that Held takes up in these paintings. For the forms in them do not exist in a clearly demarcated spatial container, but rather change and shift as we

both physically move from one vantage to another in front of the painting, but also as we compare one form to another. This constant shifting of relations between forms is closer to how perception actually works, which is to say, it is always in flux and alterable based on new information, and especially new contexts for that information. The issue of mastery—which Held’s work, in its embrace of flux, denies—introduces an ethical, even political valence to a painting like Held’s that refuses to ever fully cohere or take a definitive shape, or to place the forms that comprise it into a clear hierarchy. As Held explained to Walker, “I started trying to create structures. To give some meaning to the insanity around me, to what I would consider insanity…I’m just going to draw and give information and…articulate the situation in terms of [a] paradox of situations.”14

Despite Held’s sense at the time that he was painting the black-and-white paintings and was entering an uncharted territory that would lose him some of his supporters, it was at precisely this time that influential and perceptive critics like Lucy Lippard and Barbara Rose were evaluating what they saw as a shift away from the hard-nosed minimal aesthetics that had dominated the work of the mid-1960s towards a more complex painterly engagement with illusionism and form. Lippard’s article, “Perverse Perspectives” appeared first, in the March 1967 issue of Art International. Her articulation of the program of “perverse perspectives” could also be understood as an accurate description of Held’s black-and-white paintings.

For example when she writes:

Within the last year or so, a new and incongruous illusionism has appeared,

incorporating the statement of the flat surface of a painting and the counterstatement of

an inverse perspective that juts out into the spectator’s space. Such ‘perverse

perspectives’ are founded on disunity, on a complex, tightly structured denial of

pictorial logic which has its cake and eats it too, in the sense that it never wholly

abandons the assertion of the picture plane arrived at by modernist or rejective

painting, but distorts and reconstructs that plane outside of the conventions of

depth simulation.15

Later that year Rose extended Lippard’s observations in an Artforum article, “Abstract Illusionism,” that assessed a revitalization of illusionism. Like Lippard, Rose also posited a description of this new painterly paradigm that could be taken as evocative of Held’s blackand-white paintings:

Younger artists who continue to depict shapes…often employ variants of linear

perspective in combination with an articulated surface in order to create a new type

of complex illusionism. The most important aspect of these illusions is that they must

be mutually contradictory in order to be successful—that is, they must cancel each

other out in such a way as to render themselves unconvincing.16

Indeed, though Rose did not discuss Held in this article, it is consistent with her assessment of his work five years later in the pages of New York Magazine:

As a result of the way he manipulates these traditional ways of describing space to

contradict each other...and because of the explicit flatness of his hard reflective

ground, there is no interpreting the space Held creates as real space. On the contrary,

he consistently emphasizes the illusory quality of his illusions as pictorial and not

actual illusions…Held’s space is a bold imaginative construct having nothing to do

with the real world of actual solid objects.17

Held was thus far from alone in the shift he made in 1967. Rather he was at the vanguard of a new tendency.

Indeed, these concerns relate Held’s work to that of certain minimalist artists, most especially Donald Judd. At first this may seem contradictory, considering how Held saw the blackand-white paintings as doing away with the “reductivism” of his earlier alphabet paintings and he was upset when critic Hilton Kramer described them as Judd crossed with Franz Kline in the pages of The New York Times.18 However, Judd’s drawing practice shows how he embedded contradictory cues into seemingly straightforward line drawings. For a Judd drawing often includes subtle, calculated inconsistencies that are designed to make you think. When lines appear to make a box form, all is not as it seems. If you look closely you will see that, for example, they do not connect and further that often one side of the “box” is rendered in a different perspectival recession than the other. Once one begins to take apart one of Judd’s drawings these idiosyncrasies render the work complex and tune our cognitive motors, just as Held’s do. This can be extended to the way Judd’s three-dimensional work appears different from different perspectives and in different viewing conditions.

Further, as with minimal and conceptual artists like Judd, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt and Mel Bochner, Held was interested in the abstract logic of the diagram as a model for how his geometric forms functioned. As he told Townsend, “the space is made up of diagrammatic, charting, blueprinting.�19 For Held these were of interest because, while imaginative spaces, they were neither illusionistic nor object-like. Instead they were resolutely factual, in a sense rendering more than the human sensorium can ever perceive on its own. When we see a blueprint of a building, for example, we can imagine all the parts of it, even as we can also take it in as a totality. This is impossible in person, where one wall obscures another, etc.

This aspect is present in Held’s black-and-white paintings, where it is as if we are presented with a diagram of the operations and possibilities of vision, with all its contradictions and complexities. Thus, Held was fully in step with certain broader developments in the late 1960s art world. It is not typically possible in everyday life for us to summon all of these idiosyncrasies, but it is possible for Held to diagram them for us in his popping and locking geometric shapes. This is how geometry functions in these paintings as well. Not as an ethereal, ideal language, but rather as a common, accessible one that opens up our cognitive capabilities, and by doing so gives us new ways of using them.

Notes:

1

As Held explained to James Faure Walker: “It sounds sophomoric now, but violating the flatness of that

picture plane was a taboo that I was raised with. I wasn’t really looking for space, but for multiplicity and complexity. The space opened up because it gave me room to put more stuff in.” Walker, “Al Held Interviewed

by James Faure Walker,” Artscribe (July 1977): 6.

This is not to say that Held’s paintings are explicitly political, but rather that they are colored by the

2

increasing complexity and difficulty of daily life in America in the late 1960s. 1967, when Held started the black-and-white series, was a year that saw a stepping up in the violence in the Vietnam War, and accompanying protests, along with race riots in several major US cities. As an outspoken leftist this would have affected Held. He did not, of course, have the hubris to think that his art could directly impact mainstream society. However, his political views no doubt contributed to his analytical and conceptual (as well as formal) approach to his art.

3

Held in Walker, “Held Interviewed,” 5.

4

Held, quoted in Dore Ashton, “Al Held: New Spatial Experiences,” Studio International (November 1964):

211.

5

Held in Peter Townsend, “Interview with Al Held,” Art Monthly (1977). Original edited typescript. Courtesy

Al Held Foundation.

6

Scott Burton, “Big H,” ARTnews (March 1968): 53. One of the major differences between Mao and the other

alphabet paintings and the black-and-white paintings is that the latter obviate the heavy gravitational pull of the former, lending their forms a sense of weightless levitation.

7

Held in Walker, “Held Interviewed,” 5.

Held in Maarten van de Guchte, Al Held: Italian Watercolors (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois at

8

Urbana-Champaign, 1993).

9

Later on in his career, as his compositions got even more complex, Held would erase all traces of decision-

making and past compositions, preferring to keep only the final result.

10

See Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form. Trans. Christopher S. Wood. (New York: Zone Books,

1997). This does not even touch on the spatial models found in certain non-Western and pre-Renaissance contexts.

11

Held in Townsend, “Interview with Al Held.”

12

Held in Walker, “Held Interviewed,” 7.

13

Ibid.

14

Held in “Al Held and Andre Emmerich, December 7, 1976.” Unpublished interview. Transcript courtesy

Al Held Foundation.

15

Lucy R. Lippard, “Perverse Perspectives,” Art International (March 1967): 28.

16

Barbara Rose, “Abstract Illusionism,” Artforum (October 1967): 37.

17

Rose, “Al Held: Long Distance Runner,” New York Magazine (April 17, 1972): 89.

18

Held in Townsend, “Interview with Al Held.” “I remember Hilton Kramer the first review he wrote about

that [show], referred to them as a kind of cross between Judd and Kline…I was very disappointed.”

19

Ibid.

1. B/W V 1967–68 acrylic on canvas 114 x 114 in 289.6 x 289.6 cm

2. B/W VI 1967–68 acrylic on canvas 114 x 114 in 289.6 x 289.6 cm

3. B/W X 1968 acrylic on canvas 114 x 114 in 289.5 x 289.5 cm Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery

4. B/W XVI 1968 acrylic on canvas 144 x 168 in 365.7 x 426.7 cm Collection Everson Museum of Art

5. B/W IX 1968 acrylic on canvas 114 x 136 in 289.6 x 345.4 cm

6. B/W XI 1968 acrylic on canvas 120 x 138 in 304.8 x 350.5 cm

7. B/W XV 1968 acrylic on canvas 96 x 120 in 243.8 x 304.8 cm Collection Weatherspoon Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

8. B/W XIV 1968 acrylic on canvas 96 x 96 in 243.8 x 243.8 cm

9. Phoenicia IX 1969 acrylic on canvas 114 x 144 in 289.5 x 365.7 cm Collection Israel Museum

10. Phoenicia VI 1969 acrylic on canvas 114 x 114 in 289.6 x 289.6 cm

11. Esopus I 1969 acrylic on canvas 114 x 144 in 289.6 x 365.8 cm

12. Phoenicia VII 1969 acrylic on canvas 114 x 114 in 289.6 x 289.6 cm

13. B/W XX 1969 acrylic on canvas 96 x 96 in 243.8 x 243.8 cm Collection Dayton Art Institute

BIOGRAPHY 1928 Born October 12, Brooklyn, New York 2005 Died July 27, Camerata, Italy

EDUCATION 1950–53 Studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1952 Galerie Huit, Paris 1959 Poindexter Gallery, New York 1960 Poindexter Gallery, New York 1961 Al Held. Galería Bonino, Buenos Aires

Poindexter Gallery, New York

1962 Poindexter Gallery, New York 1964 Bilder. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zürich

Galerie Gunar, Düsseldorf, Germany

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, Zürich

1968 San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco; traveled to Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

André Emmerich Gallery, New York

1968 Al Held: Recent Paintings. Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia;

traveled to Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas

1970 Al Held: New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York

Bilder. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zürich

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, Zürich

Al Held: Recent Paintings and Drawings. Donald Morris Gallery, Detroit, Michigan

Al Held. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Galerie Müller, Cologne, Germany

1975 Al Held: Drawings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York

Jared Sable Gallery, Toronto

Al Held. Adler Castillo Gallery, Caracas

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, Zürich

Al Held: Frühe Werke/Early Works. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zürich

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'Amécourt, 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. Marianne 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, Zürich

Al Held 1959–1961. Robert Miller Gallery, New York

1980 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, Zürich

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, Zürich; 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 Gallery, 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, Zürich

Al Held New Paintings. André Emmerich Gallery, New York

1988 Al Held New Paintings. Donald Morris Gallery, 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, Zürich

1990 Al Held: After Paris, 1953–1955. Robert Miller Gallery, New York

Al Held Arbeiten von 1989. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zürich

Al Held: Neue Arbeiten. Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, Germany

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, Düsseldorf, Germany

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

2001 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, Michigan; Douglas F.

Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, Oregon; The Butler Institute of American Art,

Youngstown, Ohio; Boston University Art Gallery, 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, Jacksonville Beach, Florida

In Memory of Al Held 1928–2005. Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zürich

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

2013 Al Held: Alphabet Paintings, Cheim & Read, New York 2015 Al Held: Particular Paradox, Van Doren Waxter, New York 2016 Al Held: Black and White Paintings 1967–1969. Cheim & Read, 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, Pennsylvania

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, Mattm端ller, 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, India; 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; traveled to Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas; 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 1970s. 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, Texas; 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, California

The 1970s: New American Painting. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (exhibition

sponsored by the United States Information Agency; traveled to venues in Belgrade, Budapest,

Bucharest, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Rome, Copenhagen Warsaw)

1980 L'Amérique aux Indépendants 1944–1980. Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées, 91ème Exposition, Société

des Artistes Indépendants, 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, Texas

American Drawings in Black and White 1970–1980. The Brooklyn Museum, New York

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 MoMa, 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; traveled 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 Modern 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 Collections 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, New York

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 Contemporáneo, 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 Contemporáneo, 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, Tuscaloosa

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, Zürich

2005 American Masters: Important Paintings and Works on Paper. Marianne Friedland Gallery, Naples, Florida

2006 Berlin-Tokyo/Tokyo-Berlin. Die Kunst Zweier 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, Texas

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,

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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, Germany

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

2013 From Abstract Expression to Colored Planes. Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington

Shifting Planes: Held, Kelly, McLaughlin. Van Doren Waxter, New York

2014 Green Circle, Black Diamond. Ratio 3, San Francisco, California

Irving Sandler: Out of 10th Street and Into the 60s. Loretta Howard Gallery, New York

Al Held + Robert Mangold: B/W to Color. Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Summer Group Exhibition: Part I and Part II, Van Doren Waxter, New York

2015 Color(less). Van Doren Waxter Gallery, New York

Testing Testing: Painting and Sculpture Since 1960 from the Permanent Collection. Ackland Art Museum,

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Three Graces: Polly Apfelbaum, Tony Feher and Carrie Moyer. Everson Art Museum, Syracuse, New York

Corita Kent and the Language of Pop. Harvard Art Museums, Boston, Massachusetts; traveled to San

Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas

TXT/MSG. Spalding House/Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawaii

Showing Off: Recent Modern & Contemporary Acquisitions. Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado

American Array. Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawaii

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

American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, North Carolina Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, California Chapman University, Orange, California Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado Flint Institute of Art, Flint, Michigan Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection, Albany, New York Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawaii Jacksonville Public Library, Jacksonville, Florida Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey Museu de Arte Moderna, Sintra, Portugal Museum of Art, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona Museum of Art, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa Museum of Art, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan Museum of Art, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida Pérez Art Museum, Miami, Florida The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Rijksmuseum Twenthe Enschede, Enschede, The Netherlands Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri Samuel Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, New York Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Tate Gallery, London Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Virginia The Zimmerli Museum of Art, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey

Front cover: Boiceville studio with B/W XIV, 1968. Back cover: Boiceville studio with B/W XVI, 1968. Frontispiece: in front of Promised Land, 1970. End matter: 5th Avenue studio with B/W XI, B/W VIII, B/W IX and B/W X, 1968. All photos: AndrĂŠ Emmerich.

P r in t e d i n a n editio n o f 2 ,0 0 0 o n t h e o c ca sion of the 2 0 1 6 exhibitio n

Al Held

BLACK AND WHITE PAINTINGS

1967–1969

Design John Cheim Essay Alex Bacon Editor Ellen Robinson Printer Trifolio ISBN 978–1–944316–01–3 We are very grateful for the efforts of Maria Bedo, Gene Benson, Chad Ferber, Mara Held and the Board of the Al Held Foundation.

Al Held Black and White Paintings 1967–1969

held cover 1-18-16.indd 1

CHEIM & RE A D

CHEIM & RE A D

Al Held

Black and White Paintings 1967–1969 2/17/16 4:19 PM