Frances Barth by Sundaram Tagore Gallery

FRANCESBARTH

GALLERYMISSION Established in 2000, Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. We focus on developing exhibitions and hosting not-for-profit events that encourage spiritual, social and aesthetic dialogues. In a world where communication is instant and cultures are colliding and melding as never before, our goal is to provide venues for art that transcend boundaries of all sorts. With galleries in New York, Beverly Hills and Hong Kong, our interest in cross-cultural exchange extends beyond the visual arts into many other disciplines, including poetry, literature, performance art, film and music.

FRANCESBARTH: NEWWORKS By Karen Wilkin

When Frances Barth first forged her identity as a painter, the most adventurous American abstraction was bound up with notions of refusal and sparseness. As if in response to the reading of modernism as each medium’s jettisoning whatever was not intrinsic to it, Color Field painters and Minimalists alike rejected not only illusionism and narrative but also physical density and (often) complexity of scale and internal relationships in favor of generous, lucid, disembodied structures. Barth’s own early abstractions, which established her as an artist to be reckoned with, were about the evocative power of large expanses of uninflected color–restrained, amply proportioned, geometric compositions of surprising hues orchestrated for maximum expression. Today, decades later, Barth’s accomplished mature paintings can be characterized, largely, much in the same way as her early works. Her present-day, still radical abstractions can be described in terms of their lush combinations of unnamable colors, their eloquent economy, and their graphic clarity. Her grid-box-y (detail), 2009, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

most recent paintings, whether large or small, are among her most expansive and pared-down to date, as well as among her most radiant and chromatically unpredictable, and her most spatially provocative and ambiguous. What’s new is that, unlike her earlier works, Barth’s recent paintings, despite their evident dependence on the drama that can be elicited from forthright relationships of uninflected hues and clearly defined shapes, are also notable for their startling variety of what might be called drawing incidents, from impossibly delicate lines to bold strokes. And they are also notable for their richness and complexity—of scales, of reference, of allusions, and of pictorial languages—so much so that it’s not an overstatement to say that they suggest new possibilities for what abstract painting can encompass in the first part of the 21st century. This combination of contradictory qualities is not surprising. The fiercely intelligent, exacting, articulate Barth is a polymath whose curiosity has led her to investigate deeply a 5

broad spectrum of unlikely fields, from geology to architectural drafting to computer animation and more, all of which have resonance, however improbable, in her paintings. She’s an intensely thoughtful, rigorous painter with a thorough knowledge of past and present art, armed with a keen sense of the absurd and the witty, attributes that also find their way into her work. It’s typical, for example, that Barth refers to one recent painting, distinguished by a combination of pale, chalky, fresco-like color and muscular, albeit non-specific imagery, as Piero della Franesca Meets Philip Guston. In studio conversations, she is apt to speak of the paradoxical challenges she sets for herself, the apparently impossible tasks that, against all odds, she has accomplished without effort—or so it seems—in her recent work. (More about that contradiction later.) Barth speaks of having always been “very influenced by the argument between Delacroix and Ingres, the question of whether you’re a painter or a ‘drawer.’ I want to be both.” She speaks, too, of “telling myself stories when I paint” and of “wanting to tell stories without words,” her obvious commitment to abstraction notwithstanding. And, more particularly, she speaks of “the tension between local color and abstract color” and of wanting “big areas of ungracious color— chemical color that doesn’t exist in nature—to open up like the sky but not be sky.” 6

The wordless narratives in Barth’s recent paintings are usually “journeys” through convincing fictive spaces that she invokes with purely two-dimensional means: sharply defined shapes of relatively flat color and incidents of various sizes. As we visually move through this two-dimensional “landscape,” we become aware of the instability of the terrain before us. Disjunctive spatial shifts interrupt our progress, yet this illusionism proves to be less the result of specific elements in Barth’s paintings than a construct created by our entrenched habits of interpreting particular shapes and relationships of shapes as allusions to our perception of the three-dimensional world we inhabit. A flatly painted rhombus, cropped by the edge of the canvas, for example, can pulse between the foreshortening of perspectival reference and declarative affirmation of the literal surface of the canvas, with a nod at the non-perspectival but potent spatial conventions of Japanese screen paintings—among other things. There is nothing tricky or artful about these shifts. Barth’s dislocations could be compared with the poetics of Mannerist space—paintings in which an enormous Madonna and Child loom in the foreground, while a tiny prophet bears witness from some “other,” unspecified distance, close, in terms of the two-dimensional structure of the composition, but infinitely far, in terms of scale relations. As viewers of Barth’s paintings, we are displaced, pushed into

an unstable limbo in which we enjoy a kind of omnipotence, roaming through boundless spaces, hovering over vast distances, or facing down looming landmasses, at the very same time that we are compelled to address the fact of her large sheets of color, clearly bounded stretches of exquisitely refined pigment that forcibly remind us of the artifice of painting. Barth herself might call these ambiguous passages zones that “open up like the sky but are not the sky”—apparently unbounded distances or confrontational forms evocative of the natural world that also insist on being acknowledged as flat, artist-made passages of luminous “chemical” hues. These ambiguities are reinforced by Barth’s large vocabulary of marks and lines, which includes everything from the brushy and coarse to the achingly disciplined and fragile, and provokes a multiplicity of associations. She deploys, among other things, a range of schematic codes, both universally accepted and personal, that refer to geologic formations and building materials, and adopts, too, a host of allusions to mapping, a lexicon of grids of various dimensions and densities, plus hatchings, scratchings, and tremulous lines of such extreme delicacy that it seems impossible for them to sustain themselves across her long, horizontal canvases or even across her more rationally proportioned small rectangles. Barth’s drawing emphasizes the

spatial instabilities established by her large-scale structures of color. We gaze into the dissolving space of a broad plane of pale astringent yellow or milky gray and are returned to the surface of the canvas by assertively stroked grids or sharply defined, hard-toclassify stenciled configurations. If these elusive “signs” move us into the realm of the practical, reminding us of functional systems and means of symbolic communication, other elements—barebones, building-like “structures,” for example—pull us firmly back into the history of art, hinting, in their scale relationships and tenuous spatial references, at the symbolic landscape settings and emblematic architecture of early Renaissance painting. Barth’s multivalent drawn “language” further destabilizes us, as viewers, by suggesting that we are not only constantly changing our distance from her fleeting suggested “images”—the rocky ledges, the chasms, the “structures”—but that we are also altering our spatial orientation. Now we creep, ant-like, over an enormous formation; now we tower above a miniature incident; now we levitate to a great distance; now we are embedded in Barth’s fictive universe. The logic of scale relationships erodes, replaced by a fluid open-endedness that suggests limitless possibilities rather than, as in traditional representations, a single immutable moment. “I’d like to make things appear to exist in different times,” Barth says. “There’s no one version of reality. We can do 7

different things at different times in the same place. Thinking about that gives me greater range.” The authority and assertiveness of Barth’s recent paintings leave no doubt about how well she rises to her selfimposed challenges, yet the apparent spontaneity of these works is deceptive. “They have to get to the point where they look as if they just happened,” Barth says, “but they don’t just happen.” In fact, they are extraordinarily carefully wrought pictures. Airy, transparent, or opaque surfaces for all their freshness, are the result of attentive and sometimes prolonged revisions, calculated to achieve the appearance of immediacy. The dynamic equilibrium of colors that so distinguishes these pictures is established without repetitions, through hard-won but seemingly improvisatory adjustments of nuance, intensity, value, and hue. Barth’s exploitation of an arsenal of marks, her reveling in the differences between crisp, near-mechanical lines and tremulous hand-drawn ones, requires her to use with equal facility razor sharp colored pencils, unnervingly delicate stencils (which she laboriously cuts herself), and occasionally, in unconventional ways, her grandfather’s drafting instruments, brought with him as an immigrant from Europe. The subtly varied linear elements that this range of tools permits are played against equally subtle, equally varied expanses of color—washy, velvety, 8

or almost anonymous—that intensify the tension that Barth sets up between visible evidence of her hand and the suppression of that evidence. Important as Barth’s orchestration of these small distinctions is to the cumulative meaning of her paintings, our awareness of them alters according to how close we are to her paintings. No one viewpoint reveals everything we need to know. If the spatial instability of Barth’s images implies a variety of metaphorical locations for the viewer—above, before, within, below—real changes in our viewing distance lead to very different perceptions of what we are looking at. When we encounter Barth’s recent works from across the room, we can be engaged by the large-scale structure of big color shapes; come close, and we discover a host of small-scale, intimate incidents. Such multiplicity of scales is something we associate less with late 20th century (and early 21st century) abstraction— which is often stripped-down, singular, and graphic—than we do with traditional illusionistic painting—which is usually full of significant details, subservient to larger compositional events, that become visible only from close viewing. Barth’s paintings, their essential abstractness notwithstanding, like the paintings of the past she admires, demand and reward different readings from different distances.

All of these subtleties and layerings are important aspects of Barth’s recent paintings, but at their simplest level, they are just plain beautiful, with their ravishing surfaces, intricate drawing, and, above all, delectable, sometimes astringent, always surprising color. Part of the fascination of Barth’s palette is its ability to trigger potent associations with real experience despite its independence from local color. Barth’s hues are almost always invented. They don’t exist in nature but become metaphors for our experience of the natural world, just as her invented spatial “landscapes” become metaphors for our experience of familiar places. Barth sometimes refers to the presence of beautiful, harmonious, and alluring elements in her work as its “gracious” aspect. She is equally interested in the opposite qualities that she evokes, sometimes simultaneously. “I want to make paintings that keep making you renegotiate this graciousness,” Barth says. “You get relief, but you have to work for it.” Barth’s recent paintings insist that we put in the work of exploring their slowly revealed complexities. When we do, we receive not just “relief,” as the painter suggests, but a wonderful combination of sensual and intellectual engagement. That’s a lot.

Karen Wilkin is a leading New York-based independent curator and critic, specializing in 20th century modernism. Educated at Barnard College and Columbia University, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship to Rome. Ms Wilkin is the author of monographs on Stuart Davis, David Smith, Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Giorgio Morandi, and Hans Hofmann, and has organized exhibitions of their work internationally. She is the contributing editor for art for The Hudson Review and a regular contributor to The New Criterion, Art in America, and The Wall Street Journal.

jacobâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ruler, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 96 inches

wide brown expanse, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 96 inches

grid-box-y, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

slate and blue, 2008, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

light break, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

combed grey lt., 2008, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

putnam grey screen, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 96 inches

Br/Geo, 2008, acrylic on panel, 14 x 15 inches

underwater cut, 2008, acrylic on panel, 14 x 15 inches

shuffle, 2008, acrylic on panel, 14 x 15 inches

pink plane, 2008, acrylic on panel, 14 x 15 inches

blue/antenna, 2008, acrylic on panel, 14 x 15 inches

nightview, 2008, acrylic on panel, 14 x 15 inches

yellow volume, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 78 inches

red plateau, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 78 inches

at the corners, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 96 inches

green plane, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 96 inches

Kyoto, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 96 inches

tangent bouquet, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

magic screen, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

colored pencil blocks, 2008, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

ice palace, 2008, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

suede, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 78 inches

grey edi, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 78 inches

green screen, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

cheyenne, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

palermo, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

west mirage, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches

The artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio, New Jersey, 2009

CURRICULUMVITAE Born in New York

Education BFA painting, Hunter College, New York, NY MA painting, Hunter College, New York, NY Director, Mt. Royal School of Art, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore

Solo Exhibitions 2010 Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY 2009 Hostetter Gallery, Pingry School, Martinsville, NJ 2006 New York Studio School Gallery, New York, NY 2005 Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 2002 Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA 2000 Donahue/Sosinski Fine Art, New York, NY 1999 Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA 1998 Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA 1997 Donahue/Sosinski Fine Art, New York, NY 1995 Millersville University, Millersville, PA Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL 1994 E.M. Donahue Gallery, New York, NY University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Herter Art Gallery 1991 Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, New York, NY 1989 Tomoko Liguori Gallery, New York, NY 1988 Tomoko Liguori Gallery, New York, NY 1985 Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY 1983 Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY Russian Abecedary, Jersey City Museum, NJ 1981 Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NJ Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL 1980 Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY 1979 Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY 1978 Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY 1976 Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY 1975 Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY 1974 Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY

Selected Group Exhibitions 2009 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001

Here & Now, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY Seven Women/Seven Stories: New work from historically significant woman painters, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Extreme Possibilities: New Modernist Paradigms, The Painting Center, New York, NY (curated by Karen Wilkin) Centennial Celebration Exhibit, Selections from the Permanent Collections: American Contemporary Art, Newark Museum, Newark, NJ Land Force, Sabina Lee Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (curated by John L. Moore) Agents of Change: Women, Art, and Intellect, Ceres Gallery, New York, NY (curated by Dr. Leslie King-Hammond) click/shift/enter, Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA Colors, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY Two-person exhibition, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY Dragon Veins, Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa Faculty exhibition, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta in Miami American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY Recent Acquisitions, Payne Gallery, Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL Drawing Show, Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA Prints from Vermont Studio Center Press, Robert Hull Fleming Museum, Burlington, VT Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY Painting Abstraction II, New York Studio School, New York, NY Three-person exhibition, Montserrat College Art Gallery, Beverly, MA Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL Donahue/Sosinski Fine Art, New York, NY

1999 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992

Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL Dimension, Agnes Scott College Atlanta, GA (curated by Cathy Byrd) Drawing in the Present Tense, Art Gallery, Parsons, New York, NY (traveled to North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks; Illinois University, Normal American Academy Invitational, New York (purchase award) The Pulled Image, Helen Day Art Center, Stowe, VT Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL Revision, NEXUS, Atlanta, GA Donahue/Sosinski Fine Art, New York, NY Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA Landscape as Abstraction, James Graham & Sons, Trans-Hudson Gallery, New York, NY After the Fall: Aspects of Abstract Painting Since 1970, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY (curated by Lilly Wei) Undoing Geometry, Manhattan Community College, New York, NY (curated by Michael Chisolm) Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA Inner Landscapes: 16 x ONE, Gallery One, Toronto, Canada Drawing exhibition, Smith College, Northampton, MA Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL E.M. Donahue Gallery, New York, NY Faculty Works on Paper, Yale University, New Haven, CT Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY Hunter College Art Gallery, New York, NY Art Contemporain, LaVigie, Nimes, France Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL The New York Studio School, New York, NY Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL Abstract Painting: The 90â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY (curated by Barbara Rose)

1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986

1 x 7, Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY Bennington College, Bennington, VT Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY Works on Paper, Tomoko Liguori Gallery, New York, NY (with Gregory Amenoff, Hugh O’Donnell) Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL (with Peter Plagens) Contemporary Prints, Tomoko Liguori Gallery, New York, NY Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro Permanent collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Recent Paintings, Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY Abstractions, Past and Present, Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY Gallery Artists, Tomoko Liguori Gallery, New York, NY Scale, Space, Structure, Ben Shahn Galleries, William Patterson College, Wayne, NJ (curated by Nancy Einreinhofer) Contemporary Landscape: Five Views, The Waterworks Visual Arts Center, Salisbury, NC (curated by John L. Moore; catalogue essay, William Zimmer) Drawings, Tomoko Liguori Gallery, New York, NJ Four Painters, Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY Paintings & Sculpture, American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, NY Concordia College Library Gallery (organized by E. Agee), New York, NY Yale University Art & Architecture Gallery, New Haven, CT Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY Permanent collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY New Aspects of Abstraction, Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL Orion Editions, New York Jersey City 10th Anniversary Exhibition, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ Natural Desire, David Beitzel Fine Arts, New York, NY Constructed in Jersey City: Paintings & Sculpture, Summit Art Center, NJ

1985 1984 1983

1982 1981

Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY Artists at Hunter..., Hunter College Gallery, New York, NY (catalogue by M.S. Duffy) Painting and Sculpture Today 1984, Indianapolis Museum, IN The Gathering of the Avant-Garde, The Lower East Side 1948-70, Kenkelaba Gallery, New York, NY Abstract Painting, Redefined, traveled to Meisel Gallery, New York, NY; Munson Williams Proctor, Utica, NY; Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA; Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA; Stonybrook Fine Art Center, Long Island, NY (curated by Cie Goulet; catalogue by Carter Ratcliff) Between Painting and Sculpture, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL Painting 1985, Pam Adler Gallery, New York, NY Constructures: New Perimetrics in Abstract Painting, Nohra Haime Gallery, New York, NY (curated and catalogue by Peter Frank) Exuberant Painting, 100 Church Street, New York, NY Abstract Paintings - An Invitational Exhibit, Irit Krygier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA A Decade of Visual Arts at Princeton, 1975-85, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (catalogue by J. Seawright and H. Senie) Gallery Artists, Susan Caldwell Gallery, New York, NY Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL Painting & Sculpture Today, Indianapolis Museum, IN (catalogue by H. Ferrulli) Seven American Artists, Cleveland Museum of Art, OH (curated and catalogue by John L. Moore) Selected Gallery Artists, Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY Selected Large Paintings, Robison Art Gallery, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ Yale School of Art, Yale University, New Haven, CT Book Art, D.W. Gallery, Dallas, TX Selected Gallery Artists, Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York The Book as Art, Sarah Lawrence College; Franklin Furnace, Brooklyn, NY 75th Anniversary Benefit Exhibition for the

1979

1978

Lighthouse, Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY Paper Work, Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY New Art II: Surfaces/Textures, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Recent Acquisitions: Drawings, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Four Painters, Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, IL Russia, two-person exhibition with Andy Warhol, Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA (curated by Michael Walls) Faculty Exhibition, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY American Paintings of the 1970’s, traveling exhibition curated by Linda Cathcart, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport, CA; The Oakland Museum, CA; Cincinnati Art Museum, OH; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christie; Krannert Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Generation-Twenty Abstract Painters Born in the U.S. Between1929 and 1946, An Invitational Exhibition, Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY Abstraction in the 70s, Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA Some Abstract Paintings, William Patterson College, Wayne, NJ (curated and catalogue by Barbara Toll) Collecting Contemporary Art, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY Frances Barth, Drawings, Dan George, Sculpture, Suzanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery, Bennington College, Bennington, VT American Painting: The Eighties, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY (curated by Barbara Rose; catalogue by Barbara Rose, Vista Press) First Exhibition, Toni Birckhead Gallery, Cincinnati, OH San Francisco/Los Angeles/New York: A Three Part Series (with Donna Dennis and Gordon Matta Clark), San Francisco Art Institute, CA (catalogue by Helene Fried) Eight Abstract Painters, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (curated

1977 1975 1974 1973 1972 1970

by Suzanne Delehanty; catalogue by Dore Ashton) Talent, Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston, MA Drawing Made Material, Hayden Corridor Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Gallery Group Show, Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY The Geometry of Color, Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY Critics’ Choice: Loan Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings from the New York Gallery Season, 1976- 77, The Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY Contemporary Art in Atlanta Collections: Paintings and Drawings, The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (catalogue by C.V. Poling) Artists at Bennington, Visual Arts Faculty 1932-76, Bennington College Art Museum, Bennington, VT (catalogue by E.C. Goosen) Faculty exhibition, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY Trenton State College, Trenton, NJ Drawings and Paintings, Susan Caldwell, Inc., New York, NY Neilsen Gallery, Boston, MA Women’s Work-American Art 1974, Philadelphia Civic Center, PA Three New York Artists (with Harvey Quaytman and Bernard Kirschenbaum), Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY Painting Annual, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Warren Benedek Gallery, New York John Baldessari, Frances Barth, Richard Jackson, Barbara Munger, Gary Stephan, Houston Museum of Contemporary Art, TX (catalogue by J. Belloli) The New Gallery, Cleveland, OH Group print show, Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA

Set Design Tunes, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle, WA Hide and Seek, Jennifer Muller/The Works, guest choreographed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett, performed at The Joyce Theater, New York, NY Escape, Atlanta Ballet, choreographed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett composed by Allen Shawn, costumes by Judanna Lynn, Atlanta, GA “Tunes,” Louisville Ballet, choreographed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett, composed by Charles Strouse, costumes by Judanna Lynn, performed at the Louisville Center for the Performing Arts, KY and BCBC, Brooklyn, NY (1985)

1991 1988 1986

1984

Performances 1976 1970 1969

1968

Kristina Talking Pictures by Yvonne Rainer Performed with Joan Jonas, Judy Padow Performed in Yvonne Rainer’s Rose Fractions, North East Passing, and Trio A or The Mind Is a Muscle, Part I, Billy Rose Theater, Broadway, New York, NY Performed in Yvonne Rainer’s Performance Fractions or Composite. Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library, New York,NY

Video 2007

End of the Day, End of the Day, a film by Frances Barth, animation/video, TRT: 09:34, DVD/color and black and white. The film is set just after 9/11 and involves the daily commute at the end of the day of a husband and wife. The car ride shows a passengerside view of New Jersey along the Hudson River. With voice-over dialogue. The animation is mostly hand drawn, with a digitally animated section that accompanies the opening monologue.

Awards 2006 2004 1999 1995 1993 1987 1982 1977 1974 1973

Anonymous Was a Woman grant American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award Joan Mitchell Award Adolphe and Esther Gottlieb Individual Support Grant New Jersey State Council on the Arts Grant National Endowment for the Arts Grant John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship National Endowment for the Arts Grant Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS)

Selected Collections

195 Broadway Corporation, New York, NY Akron Art Institute, OH Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY American Can Company, Greenwich, CT Amerada Hess Corporation, New York, NY Cameron Iron Works, Houston, TX Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, NY Coudert Brothers, New York, NY Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, TX First National Bank of Houston, TX Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Humana Inc., Louisville, KY IBM Corporation, New York, NY Isham, Lincoln & Beale, Chicago, IL Jersey City Museum of Art, NJ Lehman Brothers, New York, NY, and Chicago, IL Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, IN Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA The Milwaukee Art Center, Milwaukee, WI Mobil Oil Corporation, New York, NY Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Newark Museum, NJ Paul Haim Foundation, Paris, France

Prudential Insurance Company, NJ Security Pacific National Bank, Los Angeles, CA Swiss Bank Corporation, New York, NY Tucson Museum of Art, AZ Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Wellesley College, Davis Museum, MA

Bibliography 2007 2006 2005 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997

Wilkin, Karen, “At the Galleries,” The Hudson Review, Vol. 59, No. 4, winter, pp. 621-628 Wilkin, Karen, “Barth Ranges Wide,” Art in America, October 2006, pp 186-187 Wei, Lilly, Dragon Veins, catalogue, University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL O’Brien, Barbara, Being and Belief: The Paintings of Frances Barth, catalogue, Dartmouth College, NH Cullum, Jerry, “Expanding the Possibilities of Paper,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nov. 15 O’Brien, Barbara, Beneath the Surface, catalogue, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA Moos, David, “Dimension,” Art Papers, March/April, pp. 33-34 Naves, Mario, The New York Observer, Nov.13, p.16 Johnson, Ken, The New York Times, Nov. Cassidy, Victor, “Prairie Smoke,” ArtNet.com; magazine reviews, Sept. 19 Zimmer, Bill, The New York Times, Feb. 13 Radycki, Diane, Frances Barth, Geological Time: Paintings, catalogue, Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA Negroponte, G. and Shepherd, R., Drawing in the Present Tense, catalogue, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY Cullum, Jerry, “Exploring Many Dimensions,” The Atlanta Journal, Sept. 24 Byrd, Cathy, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” Creative Loafing, Atlanta, Feb. 7 Wei, L., “Frances Barth,” Art in America, Jan., p. 99 Naves, Mario, “Promising Signs,” The New Criterion, June, pp. 48-50

Johns Street Studio, 1974

1994 1992 1991 1989

Wilkinson, Jeanne C., “After the Fall: Aspects of Abstract Painting Since 1970,” Review, May 15, pp. 11-12 Robins, Corinne, After the Fall, catalogue, pp. 43-44 Bell, J. Bowyer, Review, May 1, pp. 24-25 Wilkin, Karen, “At the Galleries,” Partisan Review I, p. 88; News, Surprise and Nostalgia, catalogue, Hunter College of the City University of New York, Leubsdorf Art Gallery A La Vigie—Art Contemporain, Midi Libre, June 26 Rencontre N° 6 Nimes, Tendance Sud, June Rencontre N° 6, Lalades, June Saltz, Jerry, “A Year in the Life: Tropic of Painting,” Art in America, Oct., p. 93 Kalina, Richard, Art in America, Oct., p. 133 Huntington, Richard, “Ideas of Abstraction,” The Buffalo News, Sept. 30, p. 21 Smith, Roberta, “Frances Barth,” The New York Times, June 10, p. C-18 Welish, Marjorie, Frances Barth 1982-93, catalogue, University of Massachusetts, Herter Art Gallery, Amherst Kramer, Hilton, The New York Observer, Dec. 30-Jan. 6 Wilkin, Karen, Partisan Review I, p. 111 Huntington, R., The Buffalo News, May 13, p. C-8 Thompson, Walter, Art in America, Sept., p. 209 Welish, Marjorie, Frances Barth—Paintings, catalogue, Tomoko Liguori Gallery, New York, NY Moore, John L. and Zimmer, William, Contemporary Landscape: Five Views, catalogue, The Waterworks Visual Arts Center, North Carolina Smith, Roberta, “Galleries Paint a Brighter Picture for Women,” The New York Times, April 14, p. C-1 Smith, Shaw, “Contemporary Landscape: Five Views,” New Art Examiner, May, p. 52 Davis, Suzanne, “Contemporary Landscape,” Atlanta Art Papers, May/June, p. 58 Barringer, Paul, “Landscape of Self vs. Picturesque Conventions—A Study in Contrast at the Waterworks,” The Arts Journal, April, p. 17 Maschal, Richard, “Landscapes’ Reflections

1987 1986 1985 1984

Troubling,” The Charlotte Observer, Feb. 22, p. D-2 Albright Knox Art Gallery, The Painting and Sculpture Collection: Acquisitions Since 1972; Buffalo Fine Arts Academy Zimmer, William, “Jersey City Keeps Its Museum Going,” The New York Times, Jan. 4 Smith, Helen C., “Ballet Triumphs With Premiere of Vivid ‘Escape’,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct.16, pp. 1-10 Smith, Helen C., “Ballet Premiers Elusive ‘Escape’,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 11, pp. J1-J4 Watkins, Eileen, “Jersey City Museum Lucky to Reach Its 10th Anniversary,” The Sunday Star-Ledger, Jan. 25, Section 4, p. 14 Watkins, Eileen, The Sunday Star-Ledger, Oct. 5, Section 4, p. 15 Watkins, Eileen, The Sunday Star-Ledger, Dec. 26, p. 60 Moodie, E., The Jersey Journal, Dec. 26, p. 3 Zimmer, William, The New York Times, Sept. 28, New Jersey section, p. 28 Duffy, M.S., Artists at Hunter, catalogue, Hunter College Art Gallery, New York, NY Lipson, Newsday, Dec. 27 Heartney, Eleanor, “Abstract Painting Redefined,” Art News, summer Glueck, Grace, The New York Times, March 8 Giliberto, Tony, “Abstract Painting Redefined,” New Art Examiner, summer, p. 71 Donnell, Sally, “Frances Barth, Martin Prekop,” New Art Examiner, summer, p. 59 Heymann, John, “Exhibit at Danforth: Abstract Painting Redefined,” Newswest, Vol. 1, No. 6, Sept. 1 Seawright, J. and Senie, H., A Decade of Visual Arts at Princeton: Faculty 1975-1985, catalogue, The Art Museum at Princeton University, NJ Frank, P., Constructures: New Perimeters in Abstract Painting, catalogue, Nohra Haime Gallery, New York, NY Goulet, Cie and Ratcliff, Carter, Abstract Painting Redefined, catalogue, Meisel Gallery, New York, NY Woolsey, “Joyous Dance Buoys Finale of New Ballets,”

1982 1981 1980 1979

Louisville Times, Oct. 5 Elson, Martha, “New Works, Premiere Keeping the Louisville Ballet on its Toes,” Louisville Times, Sept. Heilenman, Diane, “Frances Barth’s Perfectionism and Hard Work Show in Her Set,” Louisville Times, Sept. 30 Mootz, William, “Louisville Ballet at Kentucky Center for the Arts: Odalisque, Courtly Dances, and Tunes,” Louisville Courier Journal, Sept. Robins, Corinne, The Pluralist Era, American Art 1968-1981, Harper & Row Ferrulli, H., Painting and Sculpture Today 1984, Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN Lubell, Ellen, “Frances Barth at Susan Caldwell,” Art in America, Vol. 71, No. 1, Nov., pp. 222-223 Moore, John L., Seven American Artists, catalogue, The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH Oresman, Janice, Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb Art Collection, catalogue Yoskowitz, Robert, New York Reviews, Arts Magazine, Dec., pp. 14-15 Plagens, Peter, Art in America, Nov., p. 12 Glueck, Grace, “Choice Spots for a Gallery Hopping Tour of SoHo,” The New York Times, Oct. 16, section C Sweet, David, “The Decline of Composition,” Artscribe, No. 28, March 31, pp. 18-23 Yoskowitz, Robert, Review, Arts Magazine, May, p. 3 Walker, J.F., Artscribe, April, pp. 16-23 Goldman, “Judith, Printmaking: The Medium Isn’t the Message Anymore,” Art News, March, p. 82 Ruhe, B., Art/World, Feb. 15-March 15, p. 8 Poroner, P., Artspeak, Feb. 14, p. 2 Larson, Kay, Review, The Village Voice, Feb. 11 Merritt, Robert, “Andy Warhol/Frances Barth,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, Jan. 15, p. B-7 Smith, Roberta, “Portfolio, A Celebration of Women Artists,” Ambiance, March, pp. 84-87 Frank, P., The Village Voice, Jan. 22, p. 69 Carlson, P., Review, Art in America, May-June, pp. 138-139 Russell, John, The New York Times, Feb. 9, p. C-24

1978 1976

Rose, Barbara, American Paintings: The Eighties, catalogue, Vista Press, 1979 Lubell, E., Arts Magazine, March, p. 31 Henry, Gerrit, Art News, March, p 165 Herrera, Hayden, Art in America, July-August, pp. 113-114 Frankenstein, A., San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 2 Louie, R., Artweek, Feb. 25 Danohoe, V., Philadelphia Enquirer, March Forman, Nessa, “Eight Abstract Painters in Search of Their Roots,” The Sunday Bulletin, Philadelphia, March 26, p. 8 Perrone, Jeff, Artforum, March, p. 65 Robins, Corinne, Frances Barth, Arts Magazine, March, p. 6 Zimmer, William, Review, The SoHo Weekly News, Jan. 19 Cathcart, Linda, American Paintings of the 1970s, catalogue, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY Kingsley, April, “All Out Is In,” Village Voice, Jan. 30 Kramer, Hilton, “A Brave Attempt to Encapsulate a Decade,” The New York Times, Dec. 17 Kline, Kathy, “Painting of the 70s Exhibit Has Variety,” Courier-Express, Dec. 9 Fried, Helene, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, catalogue, San Francisco Art Institute Ashton, Dore, Eight Abstract Painters, catalogue, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania Doty, R., Contemporary Images in Watercolor, Akron Art Institute, OH Kingsley, April, Review, SoHo Weekly News, Oct. 21- 27, p. 17 Kingsley, April, Review, SoHo Weekly News, April Wahl, Kenneth, Review, SoHo Weekly News, Nov. 4, p. 20 Smith, Roberta, Artforum, Jan., p. 63 Henry, G., Art News, Dec., p. 122 Goosen, E.C., Artists at Bennington, Visual Arts Faculty, 1932-1976, catalogue, Bennington College Museum of Art, VT Poling, C.V., Contemporary Art in Atlanta, Georgia:

1975 1974 1973 1972

Paintings and Drawings,1976, The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA Frackman, Noel, Review, Arts Magazine, Dec., pp. 17-18 Frank, P., ArtNews, Oct., pp. 122-123 Robins, Corinne, Review, Art in America, Sept./Oct., p. 113 Segel, J., “Philadelphia: In Her Own Focus,” Art in America, July-Aug., pp. 99-101 Kingsley, April, Art International, summer Gruen, John, Review, SoHo Weekly News, May 9, p. 14 Frank, P., SoHo Weekly News, May 2, p. 14 Andre, Michael, Review, Art News, Oct., p. 125 Bowling, Frank, “A Modest Proposal,” Arts Magazine, Feb., pp. 55-59 Bowling, Frank, “Revisions Part 2, Color & Recent Painting,” Arts Magazine, March, pp. 47-50 Slade, Roy, Three New York Artists, Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. Belloli, J., John Baldessari, Frances Barth, Richard Jackson, Barbara Munger, Gary Stephan, catalogue, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX

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www.sundaramtagore.com First published in the United States of America in 2009 by Sundaram Tagore Gallery President & curator: Sundaram Tagore Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey Director, Hong Kong: Faina Goldstein Designer: Russell Whitehead Printing: CA Design

Art Consultants: Joanna Berman Rebecca Costanzo Diana d’Arenberg Joseph Lawrence Benjamin Rosenblatt

Artist’s Acknowledgments Video: James Barth Ron Nakahara Sarah Hirzel Lindsey Lodhie Essay: Karen Wilkin Photography: Courtney Wrenn Text © Sundaram Tagore Gallery Photographs © Frances Barth © Sundaram Tagore Gallery All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Cover image: colored pencil blocks (detail), 2008, acrylic on panel, 16.5 x 21.5 inches