Robert Dennis Reid (1924-2002): Figures on the Beach by BLACK ART AUCTION

Robert Dennis Reid (1924-2002)

FigUREs on the beach

Robert Dennis Reid (1924-2002)

FigUREs on The beach

Robert Reid: Dream-Like Visions

Essay by Chenoa Baker, curator and writer

Subdued colors and repeated, overlapping, numeric imagery, sheds its chrysalis of signification and becomes abstract shapes in Robert Dennis Reid’s work. They also become a stand-in for figures bringing a semi-representational style to the fore. Betty Chamberlain, a critic from the New York Times, calls his work a marvel of “surrealist infinity” and remarks that the numbers take on personalities when describing, “Figure 4 is coming to visit Figure 8 in the doorway of a beach house.” This abstraction of the figure “invite[s] [the viewer] to read but seldom offer[s] a real word… [but] leave[s] you with the pleasure of pure design.” All of these elements imbue serenity, wanderlust, yearning, and mystery in the work.

For example, Nella’s Beach embodies the “spiritual shelter” by showcasing presumably sand dunes or a cavern leading the eye to an enclosure-like form with letters and numbers inside,

beside, or floating above in the distance in relation to the cage. Subtle shades of periwinkle strokes make the sky look rounded and only a tad cloudy. The path leading to the abstract script are in mint green showing the artist’s hand by achieving a patchwork-like effect by having some white peek through denoting perforation. But expressive lines of a shade of dark periwinkle lingers above the cage drawing the eye to that office of the painting. Perhaps, this work meditates on the desire to be free. This same melancholy can be found in the generous description of how Reid collapses time: “His utterly human figures are the letters of the alphabet and numbers, involved in the entire human destiny, before birth, after death. The cleansing realm is the sea. The apocalyptic and transcendental battle rages above and below it and on earthly shores.” Critic Dorthy Hall, in 1970, says, “It is the artist’s personal vision of the universe and his attempt

to find meaning in it that are so eloquently expressed in Figures on the Beach.”

His mixed media paintings with collage achieve an incredible sense of depth through depicting vast, spacious landscapes with “near monochrom[atic] paintings in light ochers and grays, titled collectively X Minus O Games.” The faded colors are inspired by aged Byzantine manuscripts which feels paradoxical to the bright colors of the games that Reid references. Perhaps, this is an effort to solidify the timelessness of these activities. Phantoms of “solitaire, chess, bridge [are] scratched in sand and then halfobliterated by bird tracks.”

Landscape Series has double-vision or consciousness by depicting a bird’s eye view of lush farms and simultaneously, two close-up views floating in the firmament. It reminds me of Pinar and So Sinopoulous-

Lloyd’s quote from “Eco-Mysticism for Apocalyptic Times” describing how “naturalist studies and earth-based skills are mystical because they encapsulate a ‘body of knowledge’ that is always changing and never fully known given that the earth is a living text constantly rewriting itself.”

That idea of text, a constant in Reid’s work, becomes replaced by only images which therefore, make the images the primary text to read and understand. And these ‘texts’ are fragmentary.

Beach Scene (Door of No Return) undoubtedly refers to Gorée Island in Dakar, Senegal that was a portal to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. A collaged enclosure is pasted onto a beach scene— it doesn’t feel indigenous to the landscape—with a jumble of numbers approaching the ocean while a cloud hovers above and has white abstracted letters emerging from it. Other than the beach, there’s a feeling of impending

doom and a collective force looming above and looking down at the scene (perhaps self-emancipated or forced casualties). Toronto’s former Poet Laureate Dionne Brand writes in her book Map to the Door of No Return that “In the Door of No Return: that place where all names were forgotten and all beginnings recast. In some desolate sense it was the creation place of Blacks in the New World Diaspora at the same time it signified the end of traceable beginnings..I am interested in exploring this creation place—the Door of No Return, a place emptied of beginnings—as a site of belonging or unbelonging.”

Although Reid’s work has a unique flare, his work echoes in visual languages used by the likes of contemporary, Afro-Surrealist painter Megan Brielle, genre painter Danielle McKinney, and text-based, post-modernist, multidisciplinary artist Glenn Ligon. By carrying this mantle, contemporary artists breathe new life into subtle tones and find loopholes for our existence in enclosures.i

PAINTINGS

6 figures - 2 beach houses, 1970

oil and collage on canvas

44 x 44 inches signed titled and dated on Alonzo Gallery, NY abel verso

ROBERT

3 Falling, 1970

oil and collage on canvas

50 x 50 inches signed titled and dated on Alonzo Gallery, NY label verso

untitled, 1976 oil and collage on canvas 42 x 44 inches signed dated on label verso

figure on the beach, 1960

oil and collage on canvas

20 x 24 inches

signed; titled and dated verso

Untitled, c. 1970

acrylic and collage on canvas

24 x 22 inches

identified verso; 7 Brothers shipping/storage tag

Untitled, 1973

oil and collage on canvas

48 x 44 inches signed; titled and dated on E.P. Gurewitsch Works on Art, Inc, NY label verso;titled on stretcher, Figures on a Beach and inscribed with “M”

Beach Rock, 1968

oil and collage on canvas

36 x 80 inches signed titled and dated on Alonzo Gallery label verso

L’annonce #3, 1970

oil and collage on canvas

50 x 50 inches

signed titled and dated on Alonzo Gallery, NY label verso

figures on the beach #8, 1978 oil and pencil on canvas 54 x 48 inches signed titled and dated on June Kelly Gallery, NY, label verso

figures Seen from the Sea #4, 1970 oil and collage on canvas 44 x 44 inches

signed; titled and dated on Alonzo Gallery, NY, label verso

Fig’s on Beach 8:24, 1979 oil on canvas

48 x 48 inches

signed; titled and dated on label verso

Robert Reid: Icons in Nature

Essay byThom Pegg, Black Art Auction

Robert Dennis Reid was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1924. He studied at Clark College in Atlanta from 1941 to 1943 and continued his art education at the Art Institute of Chicago. Later, Reid attended the Parsons New School of Design in New York City. He enjoyed a successful career as both a professional artist and an art educator.

Reid exhibited extensively from the late 1950s through the 1990s at prestigious galleries and museums. His work was included in significant events such as the 1st World Festival of Negro Artists in Dakar, Senegal, in 1965, The Negro in American Art at UCLA Art Galleries in 1966, and the Arts in the American Embassies State Department Program in 1967. He also displayed his work at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Studio Museum in Harlem (1968-1969), and the Whitney Museum of American Art for the 1971 exhibition Contemporary Black Art in America.

Additionally, Reid’s work was regularly featured in solo and group exhibitions at influential galleries, including Alonzo Gallery, June Kelly Gallery, and Grand Central Moderns, all located in New York.

Charlotte Lichtblau, writing a review of Reid’s show at Alonzo Gallery for Arts Magazine (November, 1970), states, “(Reid’s) latest series of oils, Figures on the Beach , should first be seen and experienced, then talked about. For Reid is a subtle and deeply poetic iconographer. A clear translation into words would do violence to the viewer’s joy of visual cognition of Reid’s brilliant esthetic symbolism.”1 Lichtblau makes the case that Reid’s work presents a newly-required unique and individualistic approach so as to truly contribute historically in the artistic community existent in 1970: “Even Abstract Art has by now lost its revolutionary dynamic and become yet another link in the chain of tradition...Hence more than ever before is it up to the individual artist to find his own place and strike roots in a dense, but by no means primeval jungle of possibilities.” 2

1 Charlotte Lichtbau. “Galleries.” Arts Magazine, vol. 45, no. 2, Nov. 1970, p. 59. 2 ibid, 58.

In the foreword to Reid’s 1967 solo exhibition at Grand Central Moderns (NYC), a comparison is made to Reid’s past exhibitions:

The two past exhibitions…have used the same sort of symbols (raised letters and numbers) as in the present ensemble, and all have in common a painterly approach to subject matter. But unlike the two previous exhibitions, these ‘Figures on the Beach’ are more directly linked with visual memories personal to the painter, some close to a landscape image, others with reminiscences from childhood games and environment. As often in para-surrealist trends, a strange search for silence is present, revealed here through airy, rapid, brush strokes.3

ADI SOUTH (Art for Design and Investment South) presented an exhibition showcasing the work of Robert Reid on June 13, 1974. In the press release, writer and Abstract Luminist painter Edith Carlson expressed:

These works convey a sense of affinity with the thoughts of Camus, who saw an entire age in exile from the beauty of the sea. For Camus, the sea had a ‘cleansing and, in a wider sense, redemptive’ quality. The transparency of color in Reid’s paintings creates a succession of spiritual moods. Just as the passage of a day, a season, or a life encompasses all lights, these paintings transition from a gold-filled morning through sobering greys to a sun that bears darkness. Ultimately, however, the light is invincible, a theme that is clearly conveyed in the luminous watercolor drawings that complete the exhibition.4

Harry B. Henderson, co-author of A History of African American Artists: From 1792 to the Present with Romare Bearden, wrote about Reid in the St. James Guide to Black Artists

The innovative work of Robert Reid is disciplined yet endlessly searching. He has created a new vision of landscape that is both representational and abstract.”

3 Grand Central Moderns, New York City, NY, 1967.

4 “Robert Reid: Paintings and Watercolors.” , ADI South Gallery, Campbell, CA; 13 June 1974.

Henderson added, “Ralph Ellison noted that the greatest challenge for the African American writer was to express genuine feelings rather than conforming to what society expected them to feel. Reid has followed his own vision, ignoring those constraints. He is a singular artist who has made significant contributions to American art. 5

Reid served as a professor of painting and drawing at the Summit Art Center in New Jersey and the Rhode Island School of Design, where he also taught fashion illustration. His work is held in the collections of several institutions, including the Museum of African Art in Washington, DC; the University of Notre Dame; Cornell University; Newark Museum; Syracuse University; the University of Pennsylvania; and Drew University.

The common thread stated in all of the comments shared above is that Reid’s paintings evoke a quiet contemplation in the viewer. The influence of 19th century American luminist painting is clearly evident in his work. These artists, such as Thomas Moran, A.T. Bricher, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, Sanford Gifford and Fitz Henry Lane, created paintings characterized by effects of light in a landscape (or seascape) through the use of an aerial perspective and the concealing of visible brushstrokes. Their paintings depicted tranquility in calm, reflective water and a sky that is at once non-diffuse, but also non-objective. But Reid is not a Luminist, he only borrows characteristics of the style. He uses pencil and oil washes to achieve a minimalist composition not entirely at odds with the work of Transcendentalist painter, Agnes Martin (Martin eventually preferred the descriptor, Abstract Expressionist). Martin created paintings from 1958-1967 in a reductive style; large monochromatic canvases solely featuring a pattern of hand-drawn pencil grid-work.

Sotheby’s catalog note for The Beach (1964) reads: “The title engages with the organic world and speaks of splendor, purity and eternity. Rather than 5 Henderson, Harry B. “Robert Reid.” St. James Guide to Black Artists, St. James Press, Detroit, MI, 1998; 450-451.

merely representing a formal strategy, Martin’s reductive visual language conveys her emotional response to nature and transmits the experience of beauty and lightness in their essence. Inspiring contemplation, even meditation, Martin’s paintings hint at spirituality as inherent in nature and allude to transcendental reality.”6

Another good representation of this theme in Martin’s work of this period is her painting, Night Sea, 1963, in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.7

6 Contemporary Evening, Nov 2013, Sotheby’s, New York, NY, 2013.

7 Martin, Agnes. Night Sea. 1963, The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.© Estate of Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Agnes Martin (1912-2004), Night Sea, 1963; crayon, gold leaf and oil on linen, 72x 72 in.

Agnes Martin (1912-2004), The Beach, 1964; oil and pencil on canvas, linen, 75x 75 in.

The original manifesto of the American Transcendentalist painters claimed one of their goals was to “carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, through new concepts of space, color, light, and design, to imaginative realms that are idealistic and spiritual.” They shared that concept to a degree with the Hudson River School painters (1820-1880), many of whom were also considered luminist painters. The Hudson River School painters, similarly to literary figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, believed Nature was proof of God’s providence for the new nation.

Reid’s paintings do not lead the viewer in a particular narrative, but instead offer an environment open to the individual’s interpretation. This, by no means, insinuates a lack of content: the artist frequently presents conflicting elements to be resolved or at least, contemplated by the viewer. Simply, Reid raises the questions and then leaves it to the viewer to find possible resolutions. He introduces abstraction to his landscape compositions by employing an “anti-subject” : numbers and letters replace real people— replace names and identities. This type of dehumanization references both the African slaves as well as the Jews held in concentration camps and forced to do manual labor. In the case of the latter, the Jewish prisoners were tattooed with a number replacing their given names. The African people forced into slavery were stripped of their (complete) identities when they boarded the ships for America. But while Reid’s protagonist is reduced to a number, he still bears witness to Nature, to God, because it is impossible for one human to take that from another.

Reid’s numbers are sometimes black and sometimes white. At times, their position within the composition becomes the narrative, and other times, it is the interaction between the numbers which implies (more so than “tells”) a story. His beach houses might bring to mind the ancient Israelite tabernacles, but also doorways—a single point of transitioning from one realm into another.

Figures on the Beach, 1974 (p. 62) depicts a procession of Black figures moving beyond the structure, or quite literally, a drawn depiction of the structure on what looks like a stone tablet, down to the edge of the sea, and then rising skyward into the clouds and turning white. Are these the souls ascending to Heaven? Are the characters in the clouds angels?

Reid’s constructs recognize systemic barriers and struggle, but also offer a positive outlook, emphasizing self-reliance, spirituality and the inherent goodness of humanity presented in the form of natural order. He seems to suggest a perspective shift. By reducing people to numbers you have also eliminated any perceived hierarchy and made everyone equal. Reid encourages the viewer to prioritize his or her own sense of accomplishment and create his or her own identity. i

ROBERT

dune beach #2, 1970

oil and collage on canvas

44 x 48 inches

signed; titled and dated on Alonzo Gallery, NY label verso

figures on the beach, 1971

oil and collage on canvas

48 x 48 inches signed titled and dated on Alonzo Gallery, NY label verso titled Beach Rocks on stretcher

beach game #2, 1969

oil and collage on canvas

65 x 50 inches signed titled and dated on label verso

ROBERT

z, 1970

oil and collage on canvas diptych

42 x 44 inches

signed titled and dated on Alonzo Gallery, NY label verso

Untitled, 1970

oil and collage on canvas diptych

42 x 44 inches signed dated on Alonzo Gallery, NY label verso

house, beach (black), 1969 oil and collage on canvas

50 x 50 inches signed titled and dated on artist’s labels verso

Figures on A Beach #7, 1972

oil and pencil on linen

54 x 50 inches

signed; signed, titled, and dated on June Kelly Gallery label verso

ROBERT

Figure 4 falling, 1969 oil and collage on canvas

48 x 44 inches signed; titled, and dated with artist’s NY address on artist’s label verso

A passing amagansetT series, 191 oil and collage on canvas 44 x 44 inches signed titled and dated on Alonzo Gallery, NY label verso

ROBERT

Figures on the Beach, c. 1970 oil and collage on canvas 52-1/4 x 50 inches signed and titled on stretcher

a falling #7, 1971 oil and collage on canvas

50 x 48 inches signed, titled, and dated on Alonzo Gallery NY label verso

ROBERT

Figures on A Beach 3:30, 1970 oil on canvas

48 x 44 inches

signed; alternate title, L’Annonce on label verso

Figures on The Beach #9, 1979 oil and pencil on linen

50 x 50 inches signed and dated signed, titled, and dated on June Kelly Gallery, NY verso

A19s on beach, 1979

oil on linen

50 x 44 inches signed

ROBERT

Falling figure A (catalan), 1970

oil and collage on canvas

50 x 42 inches

signed, titled, and dated on Alonzo Gallery NY label verso

ROBERT DENNIS REID

Nella’s Beach, 1970 oil and collage on canvas

66 x 44 inches

signed; signed, titled, and dated verso on Alonzo Gallery NY labels

ROBERT

untitled, 1974 oil and collage on canvas on canvas

44 x 36 inches signed dated on label verso

figures on the beach, 1974

oil and collage on canvas

65 x 42 inches signed titled and dated on label verso

ROBERT

figures on the beach, 1970 oil and collage on canvas 65 x 50 inches signed, titled, and dated on artist’s label verso

fig’s on A beach 11:10, 1979

oil and collage on canvas

48 x 44 inches

signed

titled and dated on artist’s label verso

ROBERT DENNIS REID

untitled, c. 1974

oil and pencil on linen

52 x 48 inches signed

ROBERT

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1965 Grand Central Moderns, NY

1966 Robert Reid: Hour Games; Grand Central Moderns, NY

1969 Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA

Baruch College, CUNY, NY

1970 Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY

Robert Reid: Figures on the Beach; Alonzo Gallery, NY

Drew University, Madison, NJ

Summit Art Center, NJ

1971 Alonzo Gallery, NY

1972 NCCU Art Museum, North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC

Alonzo Gallery, NY

1973 Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY

1974 ADI South Gallery, Campbell, CA

Leslie Rankow Gallery, NY

1976 Elaine Benson Gallery, NY

Leslie Rankow Gallery, NY

1977 Grand Central Moderns, NY

Lenore Gray Gallery, Provincetown, MA

1979 Alonzo Gallery, NY

1987 Robert Reid: Landscape With Figures; George Ciscle Gallery, MD

1988 George Ciscle Gallery, Baltimore, MD

1991 Robert Reid: Watercolors; Bill Bace Gallery, NY

1992 Nye-Gomez Gallery, Baltimore, MD

1993 Robert Reid: Watercolors; June Kelly Gallery, NY

1995 Robert Reid: Watercolors; June Kelly Gallery, NY

1996 Robert Reid: Watercolors; June Kelly Gallery, NY

1998 Landscapes by Robert Reid; Milton Rhodes Gallery, Winston-Salem, NC

1999 Robert Reid Paintings: The Early Years; June Kelly Gallery, NY

2002 Robert Reid Memorial Exhibition: Paintings, 1971-1979; June Kelly Gallery, NY

2007 Point of View: An Exhibition of Works by Robert Reid; Rialto Center for the Arts, Georgia State University, Atlanta

2011 Where on Earth: The Art of Robert Reid; Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, Atlanta

group EXHIBITIONS

1959 New York City Center Gallery, NY

1961 James Gallery, New York, NY

1962 Young Artists of Promise; Mortimer Brandt Gallery, New York, NY

1963 Osborne Gallery, NY

1965 Barnard College, NY

Drawing Annual; Bucknell University, PA

Annual; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA

1966 Ten Negro Artists from the United States/ Dix Artistes negres des États-Unis; US Committee for the First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, Senegal

The Negro in American Art: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Afro-American Art; Dickson Art Galleries, UCLA Art Galleries, Los Angeles, CA

Arts in Embassies Program; United States Department of State, Malta

Academy Purchase Fund; American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York

1968 30 Contemporary Black Artists; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN

New Voices: 15 New York Artists; American Greetings Gallery, NY

1969 Four Artists (with Robert Reid, Richard Hunt, Robert Stull, and John E. Dowell, Jr.), Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

1969 Contemporary Black Artists; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI

1971 Black American Artists/ 71; Illinois Arts Council and Illinois Bell

Telephone Lobby Gallery, Chicago, IL

Contemporary Black Artists in America; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Black Artists: Two Generations; Newark Museum, NJ

Trois Peintres des États-Unis: John S. Cartier, Frank Gunter, Robert

Reid; Centre culturel americain, Paris, France

Seasonal Group Show; Alonzo Gallery, NY

St. Paul’s College, Lawrenceville, VA

1972 Faculty Show; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Art and Design, Providence, RI Alonzo Gallery, NY

1973 Musée et Galerie des Beaux Arts, Bordeaux, France USIS Library, Brussels and Amsterdam

1974 Fairweather-Hardin Gallery, Chicago, IL

New Aesthetic Viewpoints, The Montclair Art Museum, NJ

1976 Fairfield University, CT

group EXHIBITIONS

1977 American Black Art: Black Belt to Hill Country: the Known and the New; Battle Creek Art Center, Battle Creek, MI

1978 Artists’ Postcards, The Drawing Center, NY; Figure on the Beach #2

1979 Black Artists/South; Huntsville Museum of Art, AL

Gallery Group Show; Alonzo Gallery

1980 Black and Hispanic Artists; Franklin Furnace, New York

1981 Post-Modernist Metaphors; Alternative Museum, New York, NY

Recent Acquisitions; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY

Book Designs; Alternative Museum, NY

Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY

1985 George Ciscle Gallery, Baltimore, MD

Baltimore School of Arts, MD

Permanent Collection, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY

1991 The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945-1975; Kenkeleba House, New York, NY

1992 Works by African-American Artists from the Collection of the Newark Museum; Newark Museum, NJ

Watercolor Invitational; Montgomery College, Rockville, MD

Watercolor Invitational; Gallery-Harmony Hall, For Washington, MD

1993 New York Art Scene Comes to Buffalo; Albright-Knox Members Gallery, Buffalo, NY

1994 Empowerment: the Art of African-American Artists; org. by Lehman College Art Gallery for Krasdale Foods Art Gallery, Bronx, NY

1996 1996 Collector’s Show; Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AK

2001 After the Labor Day; Manhattan Borough President’s Gallery, New York, NY

2009 Hidden Gems; June Kelly Gallery, New York, NY

Ephemera Reviews & Announcements

ROBERT

Robert Dennis Reid (1924-2002): Figures on the Beach