Marcia Gygli King: Forty Years

Southwest School of Art & Craft Spontaneous Combustion Jan 29 – Mar 29. 2009

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008912048 ISBN: 978-1-883502-17-1

Marcia Gygli Kingforty years

San Antonio Museum of Art Botanical Paintings Jan 29 – Apr 12. 2009 The University of Texas at San Antonio The Culture Series Jan 28 – Mar 1. 2009

This book has been published in conjunction with Marcia Gygli King forty years with the exhibitions Spontaneous Combustion at the Southwest School of Art & Craft, curated by Paula Owen, Botanical Paintings at the San Antonio Museum of Art, curated by David S. Rubin, and The Culture Series at the UTSA Art Gallery of The University of Texas at San Antonio, curated by Scott A. Sherer.

Southwest School of Art & Craft Spontaneous Combustion Jan 29 – Mar 29. 2009 San Antonio Museum of Art Botanical Paintings Jan 29 – Apr 12. 2009 The University of Texas at San Antonio The Culture Series Jan 28 – Mar 1. 2009

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008912048 ISBN: 978-1-883502-17-1 Editor . Scott A. Sherer, PhD Designer . Rachel Schimelman, R|S Design Photography . Rachel Schimelman, R|S Design Additional photography courtesy of the artist All dimensions are given in inches Titling Text set in the Neutraface Family Text set in the Function Family Printed in USA through Lopez Printing, San Antonio, Texas ©2009 UTSA Art Gallery, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio Musuem of Art, and Southwest School of Art & Craft. All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced, in whole or in part, without permission from the publisher.

Painting As Allegory: The Art of Marcia Gygli King Robert C. Morgan

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Spontaneous Combustion 14 Playing with Fire Paula Owen

Botanical Paintings 28

The Life and Death of a Flower David S. Rubin

The Culture Series 40

The Culture of Comfort and Discomfort Scott A. Sherer

Marcia Gygli Kingforty years

Painting As Allegory: The Art of Marcia Gygli King Robert C. Morgan I believe Marcia Gygli King is a brilliant and original artist. She is original in the sense that her images evolve in relation to indelible experiences discovered in life, which become miraculously transformed through the act of painting. There is nothing programmatic about her work. She is not given to cynicism and she does not make compulsive comments about art or life. What one sees in her exuberant color crescendos is a mature, self–contained visual coherence, a flurry of poetic interludes conceived with dramatic force and a finely tuned articulation. Her paintings consistently project a fantastic, larger–than–life allegory, even as she evokes intimate aspects of her perception through her fiercely prolific imagination.

For those once steeped in the clinging vestiges of postmodern theory, the undercurrent of such claims may suggest an affront to the most fervent hoax issued in the anti-aesthetic rhetoric of the eighties — namely, that given our access to thousands of electronic images each day, no artist could possibly admit to being original. Emerging theorists pronounced that everything in art had been done! Originality was finished! — they said. We listened to the roar of these plasticine postmodernists in cadence with art–fund investors; and, through the din of the crowd, we observed elitist throngs of unoriginal neo-conceptualists, genuflecting to the chant: “Originality in art is over!”

In spite of these closed-door policies from the recent past, I choose to stand beside the art of Marcia Gygli King. She is a truly refined, even-tempered, and original artist, intent on developing a personal vocabulary as a painter. As an artist who came to critical recognition in the seventies, Gygli King chose not to copy or conform to the crowd and not to follow the trends, including other women artists who insisted that painting was dead. Some believed the history of painting belonged to men and therefore did not fit the canon of feminism. Although a heartfelt and intelligent advocate of women’s rights on many levels, Marcia Gygli King did not become an artist to join the crowd or to become part of an ideology. She became an artist for other reasons — namely, to express visual ideas in a unique artistic language that made sense to her.

Over the years, Gygli King has traversed through her personal lexicon of visual signifiers, working initially in San Antonio, and later in Manhattan and Long Island. Soon it became clear that her paintings were neither fully abstract nor fully representational. In some cases, they were neither painting nor entirely sculpture. Much to her dismay, Gygli King discovered that some critics perceived her as an artist without a clear mediumistic category. Naturally, she took this as a compliment. Not only was she ignoring the barriers of style but also between two and three dimensions. Her approach was to paint according to sensory impression, personal observation, and dynamic interface. In Gygli King’s flower paintings and babbling brooks in the late eighties and nineties, the purpose of creating optical-rococo frames was to extend the painting into the viewer’s space through a kind of metamorphosis.

For example, in her erotically sublimated painting Long Island Burning Bush (1989), the frame is transformed and extended into a chair, presumably to give the viewer a more relaxed place to observe the blazing wildflowers. The point of this series was to lure the viewer into the pictorial space rather than creating a barrier or separation through the use of a conventional frame. Gygli King’s exaggerated framing device functioned effectively in two other paintings as well, titled Springs Upstate (1990-92) and The Nichols’

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Barn, Sagaponack, Long Island (1990-92). In either case, they challenged the viewer by creating a visual ambiguity between the illusion both inside and outside the painting, specifically in the floral or water motifs that extend off the wall and into the viewer’s space. This relationship of painting to frame in Gygli King’s paintings of the early nineties is analyzed and discussed at some length by the art critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto in a catalogue essay written for Gygli King’s exhibition at the prestigious Guild Hall Museum in Long Island in 1995.

In this essay, I would like to go beyond the illusions associated with these paintings and focus instead on the historical displacement that provides us with another angle of vision on our present reality. Gygli King has a strong metaphorical bent that guides her painterly vision. This may not have been evident at the outset with her delicately reductive abstract gesso and Rhoplex dot paintings or her free-form gestural delineations of her trees, but series of paintings provided necessary steps along the way. For an artist to use metaphor, the personal touch along with a clear sense of aesthetic distance should be felt at the outset: indeed, in these spatial dots on paper and in the gestural tree forms on canvas we see both. The beginning of an allegory is hidden somewhere in these works, as is the inner-revolt against pure formalism and the minimal/conceptual paradigm that dominated the sixties in New York — a tendency the artist has attempted to refute in her emphasis on allegory.

Gygli King operates within the realm of metaphor, not in literal space and time. Rather than talk of space and time in the conceptual sense, let’s say that Gygli King’s paintings are about the interface between memory and history, the personal and the social, the intimate and the public. These connections have always been a significant theme used by significant painters in the past. I believe what we are seeing in this exceptional triumvirate of exhibitions in San Antonio dedicated to Ms. Gygli King, and produced by an exceptional team of curators, is the real evidence of a painter who understands allegorical painting and is not afraid to put these nuances forward. The metaphors of life include her memory and her experience transposed and transliterated into the subject matter of painting — not through the stoic literalness of “American Gothic,” but more toward the harnessing of nature — trees, flowers, gardens, streams, animals, and the recent revival of human characters from the late Medieval and early Renaissance period.

In the Culture Series — as she calls it — Marcia Gygli King is always the heroine behind the scenes, the hidden narrator, the one who transforms reality by displacing the present in relation to the past. In looking at these paintings, we are given the opportunity to listen to her stories. While they may appear strange at first, they are telling us something that cuts through the mediated politics of the moment into the metaphors of life that our ancestors may have understood better than us. Thus, we have Gluttony (1997) and Seduction (2001) — two of the Seven Deadly Sins — where male and female protagonists either indulge or become indulged without a care for tomorrow, performing their roles as victims of desire, without a Buddhist bone in their bodies. In another painting, titled The Family (2005), we see a buxom Renaissance woman serving a crock of beer to a feckless man gulping soup, who is oblivious to the disconsolate woman beside him holding a screaming child.

As art history moves forward in time, we become acculturated to the history of other places in the world as they become acculturated to us. The challenges for the contemporary American painter meet more than just the eye. They meet the heart and the mind as well.

The huge dissemination of ideas in art over the past three decades in the history of world art may have caught us off-guard. What we were used to calling our own is fast becoming transplanted into new terminologies, such as globalism and transculture. Yet, in spite of this rapid transition, Marcia Gygli King has managed to understand a fundamental truth — that to become a universal

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artist — in the sense of appealing to viewers outside of one’s own culture — one must go more deeply within oneself. This is the great paradox of art today, which Gygli King implicitly understands — to become universal, one must enter into a realm of subjectivity beyond common thinking. Her process as a painter from the early tree paintings (1970s) to the flower paintings (1990s) to the recent Culture Series is evidence of this paradoxical transition. The art of Marcia Gygli King is moving through time. Yet her paintings are not merely signs of time’s passage, but a heroic consolation that the artist is still capable of opening people’s eyes, hearts and minds from other places in the world. What was once a blatant, sometimes transparent romantic idea in the nineteenth century has now become an implicit truth in which painters such as Gygli King are responding to paintings from other cultures in a way that would not have been unlikely a century ago.

Today, one of the common features of our routine lives is the Internet. We have become habituated to sending and receiving electronic mail. We are bombarded with attached files to be download instantly and data we must upload. There is the omnipresent junk mail and spam — stuff we neither need nor want — that takes time to dump and delete. This has become our second nature — to dump and delete. We may get backaches, sore necks, dizziness, bad eyesight, but somehow we accept this as the future within the present: It is simply our way of life. While a common nuisance today, a decade ago it was merely common. This was also true of cell phones and now SMS messaging. In two of her important paintings in the Culture Series called Internet (2006) and Television (1999), there are no actual signs of either apparatus, but there are the same gaping, magnetized followers, hungry for the latest trend. They may be the postmodernists of the Renaissance, dressed in the attire of the period and leading people down the primrose path, as the flute-player in his beautiful robe catches the attention of his eager young audience. In Television, babies are transformed into readymade consumers, fed by the latest trends, and given over to the castle of desire. Whereas Emerson once said: “Things are in the saddle / they ride mankind.” Today we can speak more openly of narcissism and incessant vanity as being in the saddle. A third painting, titled Fame (2008) — the largest in the exhibition (measuring 10 x 13 feet) — shows an angel blowing an enormous brass horn, promoting the same false values, seducing the crowd, giving them a readymade identity that will soon be swept away.

Gygli King is cognizant of the fact that we are living through accelerating times, much faster than those of our forebears. Information travels at the speed of light, moving into nanoseconds. In the sixties when television turned to color, and men landed on the moon, some believed that technology could go no further. Yet the spread of recent technology and the intrusion of these rapid-fire communication technologies into our homes are the virtual backdrop — the invisible scenario — behind the Culture Series. Here Marcia Gygli King has, perhaps, unwittingly arrived at another important painterly truth — that we are unlikely to know the present solely by immersing ourselves within it. In her somewhat droll expressionist dog paintings, her bolsa (purse) paintings, her gesso and dot paintings, and her early landscape reliefs — all from the eighties — we get some sense of a present-day immersion. By the nineties, we begin to see the larger sculptural reliefs and the Botanical Series, which move Marcia Gygli King’s allegorical concept to another level. Suddenly she is less immersed in the everyday present and looking toward referencing symbolic modes of expression from the past, namely Romanticism. This is generally true of her dynamic botanical paintings of the nineties, insightfully discussed

by David S. Rubin in this catalog. The Botanical Series overlaps chronologically with the Culture Series (also begun in the nineties).

In each of these two series, the artist is consciously attempting to displace the viewer by creating an unsettling involvement with her subject matter. As Rubin has pointed out, these flowers are not just “flowers.” Here I would argue that Gygli King is loading the metaphors through the act of seeing and transforming them, thus enabling the consciousness of the viewer to rise to another level.

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I am referring to a kind of sublimated expression that coheres with aesthetic distance, this being the vehicle whereby the metaphor usurps perception as the provisionary means to communicate unconscious fears, longings, and desires.

Aesthetic distance in these paintings does not happen by chance. For this reason, Gygli King developed the monoprint transfer technique for the Botanical Series and the work in the Culture Series. The technique involves literally painting a second version of the original on acrylic sheets, which are then impressed on another canvas or paper. Once the shapes appear on the second surface, Gygli King proceeds to apply additional marks where they are necessary in order to give the painting a textural quality, to augment the intensity of the images. This procedure is both technical and, to a degree, formal. It is decidedly complex and physically arduous, involving athletic kneepads, in that the artist is required to move over the panels on hands and knees pressing the painted acrylic panels against the canvas on the floor. The point of this extended exercise is to give each work a historical presence of its own. The metaphorical quality arrives not only through the subject matter — a style of Renaissance theater with costumed figures, such as the portraits of the artist’s mother, Cappie — but also through a rude sense of historical displacement. The Culture Series is about shifting our attention away from the present into another time, another memory. While the subject matter of these paintings would normally give viewers a sense of comfort through familiarity, Gygli King’s monoprint transfer technique offers something more. We now enter the realm of allegory whereby we metaphorically re-live the present within the past, thus shifting our perceptions and our attention away from what we know to what we speculate on the human condition. Here we begin to encounter characters and people from another time and place, mythic events from an era removed from the present we assume to know.

Marcia Gygli King’s paintings reveal another way of life, a way of life we never knew. Yet, like some Hollywood films, where Medieval mythology is re-created before our eyes, she does it from the perspective of the present. She paints these canvases large; but in contrast to Hollywood, the images don’t move. They are fixed in a single place and a single time. This, of course, is what a painting does. It remains static in the physical sense. Even so, within the static picture plane, it is possible to juxtapose contrasting elements in such a way that holds still and focuses our perceptions of the world as perpetually changing. In the same breath, we envision movement or kinesis through arbitration, that is, the vitality of the artist’s paint glittering and seething with excitement. As a result we may feel connected to that space, rather than separated from it. This kind of experience is about as close to contemporary art as one may find. I believe Marcia Gygli King is an original artist who makes this happen, who gives us a sense of ourselves as we view her marvelous world. Her paintings take us outside of banality and bring us back to the world again — more alive and more cognizant of all that makes life worth living. I cannot think of a more original way to be an artist.

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Spontaneous Combustion

Playing With Fire

By Paula Owen When Marcia Gygli King established a studio in New York City in the late 1970s, she did so with a sense of purpose fairly rare at the time. Without knowing it she was following the advice of psychologist Arnold H. Glasgow who said that “success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.”

Though she had studied at The Cleveland Institute of Art and with Reginald Rowe in San Antonio and had been painting for over twenty years when she rented her studio in SoHo, it was the first time that she had been on her own and able to totally focus on her work. “I was possessed by discovery and affirmed by the process, but I needed validation — self–validation,” she says of that time, adding “I was searching. I didn’t know how to get at it.”

Remembering Rowe’s tenet — that there are as many kinds of artists as there are people — she found the confidence to ignite her natural drive, discover her own path, and conquer the “many impediments.”

The exhibition Spontaneous Combustion is comprised of two bodies of works on paper, one from the period of time she painted in San Antonio and the other from her first few years in New York City. Gygli King’s physical and spontaneous approach to painting is powerfully apparent in each. Animated by loose and restless brushwork or intentionally awkward forms and repetitive marks, both bodies of work achieve a similar edgy exuberance even while the approach, subject matter and palette change.

The potency of the early Texas Trees (ca 1970), for instance, is in the impulsive stroke and color as well as in the detectable urgency with which she completes one study in order to move on to the next. Of these pieces, she says that it was the heat and light of Texas summers that she was trying to convey, as well as the unique shape of the live oaks. In the Texas Tree studies one can observe her experimentation with disparate composition, eccentric doodles, or implied horizon lines. In the more vivid Texas Tree with Wildflowers paintings (ca 1975), voluptuous and whimsical, she attains a Fauvist intensity.

In Texas Tree With Wildflowers #3 (ca 1975), the scarlet tree buckles and twists, barely anchored to the ochre ground by the suggestion of deep shade as it tries to escape the picture plane. In Texas Tree – Hot Day (ca 1975), the shimmering South Texas heat is palpable in the recurring scratchy marks and striations, agitated contours, and sizzling colors, all dominated by Gygli King’s favored azo yellow.

The New York Series reflects Gygli King’s passion for experimentation coupled with a new force — the unrelenting energy of the city.

“It was almost overpowering,” she says of her first impressions. I was completely over-stimulated by the options, but exhilarated by the activity and the great community of other artists, which was part of the excitement of that time in New York.”

With the move came a shift in her use of color and a turn toward abstraction, a purge of the florid Texas hues and subject matter in

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favor of those drawn from the urban landscape. Gygli King says that this shift also came about because she wanted to challenge herself with a more limited palette, especially in light of her innate love of color. She laughingly admits that, after she took a workshop with Washington School colorist Gene Davis, the contrarian in her adopted a khaki-colored monotone for the next series of works.

“I lived across from a factory where they made lamps, and I could watch the repetitive motions of the pieceworkers from my window.

They didn’t seem bored, as I would have expected, so I thought I’d see what it was like.” The result was a large series of “dot” paintings in which she created forms comprised of hundreds of gesso and Rhoplex dots squeezed onto the surface of the paper.

Eventually she incorporated other kinds of “dots” made of piñata paper, which she adhered to the surface of the painting. “I seem to have been influenced by Mexican decorative techniques like stitching and piercing,” she admits. “I like to punctuate things.”

The works in the Bolsa Series (ca 1983) are based on memories of her grandmother’s large purse, which, clutched on her lap, symbolized both power and protection. Created during a time when Gygli King was in touch with other women whose feminist art ideas were gaining acceptance, yet still a time when feminist subject matter was somewhat risky, these works signify her heightened confidence in drawing from her personal experience rather than from the world around her.

In a 1980 essay published in Art Journal, Lucy Lippard wrote that “the more women’s work I saw, the more my respect grew for those artists who, having been forcibly cut off from the mainstream, persevered in exploring their own social realities, even — or especially — when such exploration did not coincide with the current fashions.”i Gygli King’s paintings of purses are such explorations. De-contextualized, pendulous, and vaguely animate, the Bolsa paintings are as formally striking as the works that pre-date them, but are more intriguing because the subject matter is both quotidian and charged with symbolism.

Shortly after the Bolsa Series, Gygli King veered away from feminist source material and painted the pieces entitled Copper #1, #2, and #3 (ca 1986). With their odd, anthropomorphic trapezoids on a copper colored field, these works epitomize Gygli King’s craving for fresh approaches. Their spirited brushwork and metallic surfaces suggest an artist in full possession of her tools and destiny, confirming her stated declaration that she has always eschewed a recognizable style or icon in favor of the pursuit of new directions. This pursuit is exemplified by the works in Spontaneous Combustion, in which she fulfilled Glasgow’s advice, and “set herself on fire.”

i

Lucy Lippard, “Sweeping Exchanges: The Contribution of Feminism to the Art of the 1970s,” Art Journal 40.1/2 (Autumn-Winter, 1980): 363.

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Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #1, ca 1970, acrylic, pencil, pastel on paper, 14 x 11 Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #2, ca 1970, acrylic, pastel on paper, 14 x 11

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #3, ca 1970, acrylic on paper, 14 x 11 Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #5, ca 1970, acrylic, pastel on paper, 14 x 11

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #7, ca 1970, acrylic, pencil on paper, 14 x 11 Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #8, ca 1970, acrylic, pastel, pencil on paper, 14 x 11

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #9, ca 1970, acrylic, pencil on paper, 14 x 11 Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #10, ca 1970, acrylic, pastel, pencil on paper, 14 x 11

Texas Tree – Hot Day, ca 1975, acrylic, pencil on paper, 30 x 23

Vase with Pi単ata Paper, ca 1980, acrylic, modeling paste, paper discs on paper, 36 x 24

New York Series – Horizon Line #1, ca 1983, acrylic, collage, Rhoplex gesso on paper, 24 x 28.5

New York Series – Horizon Line #2, ca 1983, acrylic, pastel, Rhoplex gesso on paper, 24 x 28

Bolsa #1, ca 1983, acrylic, pastel on paper, 24 x 24

Marcia Gygli King: Spontaneous Combustion Southwest School of Art and Craft / January 29 – March 29. 2009 Exhibition Checklist Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #1, ca 1970 acrylic, pencil, pastel on paper, 14 x 11”

Texas Tree with Bullseye, ca 1975 acrylic on paper, 18 x 24”

New York Series – Khaki, #1, ca 1985 acrylic, Rhoplex on paper, 9 x 12”

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #2, ca 1970 acrylic pastel on paper, 14 x 11”

Texas Tree with Evening Pond, ca 1975 acrylic on paper, 37 x 32”

New York Series – Khaki, #2, ca 1985 acrylic, Rhoplex on paper, 9 x 12”

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #3, ca 1970 acrylic on paper, 14 x 11”

Texas Tree with Wildflowers, #1, ca 1975 acrylic on paper, 19.5 x 24.5”

New York Series – Khaki, #3, ca 1985 acrylic, Rhoplex on paper, 9 x 12”

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #4, ca 1970 acrylic, pastel, pencil on paper, 14 x 11”

Texas Tree with Wildflowers, #2, ca 1975 acrylic on paper, 17 x 23”

New York Series – Khaki, #4, ca 1985 acrylic, Rhoplex, pastel on paper, 9 x 12”

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #5, ca 1970 acrylic, pastel on paper, 14 x 11”

Texas Tree with Wildflowers, #3, ca 1975 acrylic on paper, 23 x 17”

New York Series – SoHo, #1, ca 1985 acrylic, Rhoplex, pastel on paper, 24 x 36”

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #6, ca 1970 acrylic, pastel, pencil on paper, 14 x 11”

Vase with Piñata Paper, 1980 acrylic, modeling paste, paper discs on paper, 36 x 24”

New York Series – SoHo, #2, ca 1985 acrylic, Rhoplex on paper, 24 x 36”

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #7, ca 1970 acrylic, pencil on paper, 14 x 11”

Bolsa, #1, ca 1983 acrylic, pastel on paper, 24 x 24”

Copper, #1, ca 1986 acrylic, modeling paste on paper, 24 x 36”

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #8, ca 1970 acrylic, pastel, pencil on paper, 14 x 11”

Bolsa, #2, ca 1983 acrylic, modeling paste, pastel, pencil on paper, 20 x 25.5”

Copper, #2, ca 1986 acrylic on paper, 24 x 36”

Texas Tree, Spinach Green Study #9, ca 1970 acrylic, pencil on paper, 14 x 11” Texas Tree Spinach Green Study #10, ca 1970 acrylic, pastel, pencil on paper, 14 x 11” Texas Tree with Yolk, #1,1974 acrylic, pencil on paper, 41 x 34” Texas Tree with Yolk, #2, 1974 acrylic, pencil on paper, 41.5 x 34.5” Texas Tree – Hot Day, ca 1975 acrylic, pencil on paper, 30 x 23”

Bolsa, #3, ca 1983 acrylic, pencil on paper, 20 x 26” Bolsa, #4, ca 1983 acrylic, pastel on paper, 24 x 28” Horizon Line, #1, ca 1983 acrylic, collage, Rhoplex on paper, 24 x 28.5” Horizon Line, #2, ca 1983 acrylic, pastel, Rhoplex on paper, 24 x 28”

Copper, #3, ca 1986 acrylic on paper, 24 x 36” Talisman #1, ca 1986 acrylic, pastel on paper, 104 x 76” Talisman #2, ca 1986 acrylic, pastel on paper, 105 x 76” Talisman #3, ca 1986 acrylic, Rhoplex, pastel on paper, 105 x 76”

Botanical Paintings

The Life and Death of a Flower David S. Rubin

My subjects are organized around the rhythms of nature

such as life and death, vitality and aging, calm and

storm, ebb and flow. i

Marcia Gygli King For Marcia Gygli King, the traditional still life subject of a flower is really not so still. Like all living organisms, a flower has a lifespan.

It sprouts from a seed, it needs water to survive, it blooms in response to light, and at some point it will wilt away and die. In her capacity as an artist, Gygli King draws inspiration from such aspects of flowers and, in her Botanical Series, the flowers become evocative metaphors for many of the truths and complexities of life itself.

Although Gygli King has always loved nature, she did not begin actively painting floral images until the early 1990s, when she acquired a mid-nineteenth century farmhouse in Sagaponack, New York, a richly vegetated area that supplies food to resorts in the Hamptons. One of the perks of the new property was that it came with a lush garden, a strong contrast to the open expanses of south-central Texas, where Gygli King had lived during the 1960s-early 1980s and today maintains a residence. Delighted by the new garden surroundings, Gygli King began noticing many flowers she had never seen before. Around the same time, Gygli King discovered The Temple of Flora, an early 19th century print folio published by Dr. Robert John Thornton, a British botanist. Gygli King was fortunate to acquire a print from the folio of a night-blowing cereus, a nocturnal species that blooms infrequently and only for one hour at midnight. In Thornton’s folio, the vivid golden-toned flower floats in the center of the composition as if suspended weightlessly, superimposed over a dark, nighttime country landscape with an illuminated moon in the distance.ii For Gygli King, the brilliance of the flower set against the blackness of the background suggests the intrinsic duality of life and death, and the fragility and temporality of being. From the very beginning, such metaphors are evident in Gygli King’s depictions of flowers which, far from being prettified, idealized, dainty, or quaint, may be animated and exuberant or brittle and wounded. Some, in fact, appear to be mutants that have been traumatized or hybridized.

Carlina (1997) and Trumpet Vine (1997), two of Gygli King’s earliest botanicals and both based on prints, reveal the gritty sensibility that remains constant throughout the series. Gygli King begins each painting using the process of “once-removed painting” that she developed in the 1980s, building up a multi-layered surface by painting on Plexiglas, pressing the painted Plexiglas against canvas, and reworking the paint-imprinted canvas with subsequent pressings and multiple paint applications. As the imagery unfolds through an artistic process that is itself as organic as the life cycle of a flower, Gygli King brings her intuitive temperament to the table, exaggerating an element here or inventing a detail there. In Carlina, the focal point of the composition is the flower’s dark black center, around which all else revolves in a centrifugal motion. A mountain species that can only bloom at high altitudes, Gygli King’s Carlina displays stems that appear muscular and triumphant, while its black core is presented like an icon, reminiscent of late 19th

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century symbols for the soul or of Abstract Expressionist emblems for the unconscious or the sublime. Trumpet Vine, in contrast, seems more threatening or vengeful, with its jagged edged leaves appearing like swords dipped in blood.

Spending time in her garden has undoubtedly increased Gygli King’s sensitivity to the temporality of flowers, and in their capacity as metaphors, to the preciousness of all living things. Accordingly, when Gygli King gives life to her subject in Bird of Paradise (1998), she envelops the exotic flower in a field of dazzling white light, as if amplifying the effects of photosynthesis. Similarly, there is a nascent tension in Poppies (1999), where three blooming flowers await the imminent debut of an undulating bud that will soon join them in the world of the living.

Gygli King’s inventive and playful spirit is evident in paintings such as Fritillaria (Crown Imperial) (1998) and Cleome Dendroides (2001). For the former, Gygli King began by painting a fritillaria flower studied from her garden, but then added appendages in the form of bluebells, flowers that bloom during the same season. In her treatment of the latter, which is based on a photograph, Gygli King took great liberties with the composition, exaggerating the spiky stems so they appear like mechanized spindles or prongs.

When interpreted as anthropomorphic creatures, Fritillaria (Crown Imperial) recalls a proud debutante making her grand entrance, while Cleome Dendroides (a tree-like spider flower) suggests an aggressive predator on the attack.

Gygli King has commented that, although her process is time-consuming and labor-intensive, painting the botanicals is a genuine labor of love.iii In simple terms, Gygli King considers art to be a gift — not only to potential audiences, but to the artist herself. Conveying this notion is one of Gygli King’s favorite paintings from the series, Mixed Flowers with Yellow Roses (2001). Blooming vibrantly in a vase that is itself adorned with a floral motif are two “Yellow Roses of Texas.” Bustling with energy against a backdrop of slowly wilting flowers of various other species, and recalling the glorious treatment of Thornton’s Night-Blowing Cereus set against darkness, Gygli King’s yellow roses are perfect metaphors for the joy and affection that she feels for San Antonio.

i Marcia Gygli King, quoted in Marcia Gygli King: Relief Paintings 1982-1984 (San Antonio, TX: Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, 1984) unpaginated. ii Two artists realized Thornton’s vision. The flower was painted by Philip Reinagle (1749-1833), while Abraham Pether (1756-1812) painted the moonlit landscape. iii Marcia Gygli King, in conversation with the author, San Antonio, Texas, 10 October 2008. image: Night-Blowing Cereus from The Temple of Flora

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Botanical Series, Carlina, 1997, oil on canvas, 91 x 67, Collection of Peggy and Lowry Mays, San Antonio Botanical Series, Trumpet Vine, 1997, oil on canvas, 91 x 67, Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio

Botanical Series, Bird of Paradise, 1998, oil on canvas, 40 x 51.5, Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio Botanical Series, Fritillaria [Crown Imperial], 1998, oil on canvas, 76 x 48, Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio

Botanical Series, Poppies, 1999, oil on canvas, 34 x 40, Collection of Peggy and Lowry Mays, San Antonio Botanical Series, Cleome Dendroides, 2001, oil on canvas, 45 x 68, Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio

Botanical Series, Mixed Flowers with Yellow Roses, 2001, oil on canvas, 75 x 48, Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio

Marcia Gygli King: Botanical Paintings San Antonio Museum of Art / January 29 – April 12. 2009 Exhibition Checklist Parrot Tulips, 1992 oil stick on paper , 47 x 35.5” Collection of Rollin W. King, Jr., San Antonio

Botanical Series, Rhododendron Burst, 1999 oil on canvas, 34.75 x 33” Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio

Botanical Series, Carlina, 1997 oil on canvas, 91 x 67” Collection of Peggy and Lowry Mays, San Antonio

Botanical Series, Plumeria, 2000 oil on canvas, 66 x 48” Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio

Botanical Series, Trumpet Vine, 1997 oil on canvas, 91 x 67” Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio

Botanical Series, Cleome Dendroides, 2001 oil on canvas, 45 x 68” Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio

In the Studio, 1997 oil stick and acrylic on paper, 40 x 51.5” Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio

Botanical Series, Mixed Flowers with Yellow Roses, 2001 oil on canvas, 75 x 48” Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio

Botanical Series, Bird of Paradise, 1998 oil on canvas, 40 x 51.5” Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio Botanical Series, Fritillaria (Crown Imperial), 1998 oil on canvas, 76 x 48” Courtesy of the artist, New York and San Antonio Botanical Series, Cherries and Corn, 1999 oil on canvas, collage, 40 x 55.5” Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Prassel, San Antonio Botanical Series, Poppies, 1999 oil on canvas, 34 x 40” Collection of Peggy and Lowry Mays, San Antonio

The Culture Series

The Culture of Comfort and Discomfort Scott A. Sherer In her most recent body of work, the Culture Series, Marcia Gygli King turns her attention to the creation of narrative paintings that simultaneously seduce and challenge. Taking advantage of her seemingly effortless skills in drawing, color, and composition, Gygli King creates expressive works that lure viewers into dramatic worlds. She constructs scenes that are marked, especially in small-scale reproductions, with the charm of storybook styling. Importantly, however, any simple pleasure in any fantasy structure is short-lived when vibrant color and figuration develop into commentary on the human condition. Like those of James Ensor or Max Beckmann, Gygli King’s protagonists exhibit elements of the grotesque that live in everyone. While her “subjects” may be clothed in styles that reference an indistinct time and place somewhere in central Europe between the Gothic and the Baroque, the mises-en-scène are certainly transhistorical as they are directed toward contemporary concerns.

Gygli King promotes a productive instability that resonates between the visual pleasure of her stylistic choices and her sharp cultural critique. Her brilliant color, expert rendering, and dynamic organizational strategies mix to unsettle any secure location for the viewer’s attention and contemplation. In Advertising (1998), even a simple meal of stew, bread, and grog becomes an exercise in excessive consumption, and in Television (1999), jaunty Cronus/Saturn figures leave the grandeur of a columned edifice to consume tender young children. In The Internet (2006), figures in elaborate costuming occupy a lush, walled garden and look over a pied piper’s shoulder at an idyllic landscape, but a distant waterfall, as it both carries and engulfs all information, threatens their security. Familiar themes and vibrant compositions serve to moderate Gygli King’s challenging considerations of individual subjectivity, social relations, and cultural constructions.

As is evident in her subject matter and in her aesthetic choices, throughout the Culture Series, Gygli King tackles the challenge of allegorical structures. Indeed, in these ambitious paintings, Gygli King demonstrates how allegory may be a particularly useful mode of investigation in our present time.

Allegory describes a method of observation, explanation, and argument that explores the interrelationships between historic antecedents and contemporary situations. New explanation and commentary may provide insight into significant themes and remind us that, as much as each day may promise new possibilities, we nevertheless live among broader historic and cultural contexts. The influential historian and theorist Craig Owens argued that postmodern interest in allegory is due to the fact that, in our times, the purpose of artistic endeavor is “no longer to proclaim its autonomy, its self-sufficiency, its transcendence; rather it is i to narrate its own contingency, insufficiency, and lack of transcendence.” Ultimately, allegory is troubling. While we may enjoy historic themes and the hope that an author may lead us safely through a complex argument or to an intriguing aesthetic destination, we also may recognize the difficult negotiations that construct most aspects of our thoughts and our lives.

The Family (2005) and The Family Tree (1997) extend far beyond domestic subject matter to engage with critique of modern emphases on production and consumption that animate multiple sectors of daily life. In The Family, abundant food and drink in an

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energetic composition of rich colors and textures welcome the viewer to a family’s success. Anchored however temporarily by a shared meal, the father occupies himself with his own needs, a mother holds a child to her breast while offering a drink to a visitor, and between them, another woman brings a stein and gestures to the glorious supply in the background. Regardless of the degree of self-absorption, each figure with his or her own perspectives and personality is also directly connected with others in the immediate group and, by extension, the broader community and, of course, the viewer.

The setting in The Family Tree provides evidence of successful (re-) production. Young parents and a child enjoy a meal amid the activity of their rambunctious goats in the fertile green of their garden. The gesture of the man’s open hand welcomes the viewer to his world, but it also seems to be a signal of surrender under the weight of the responsibilities of family life — his wife and her child (whose body seems to exceed its own body’s normal dimensions) as well as his goats that threaten to devour the entire landscape. In these works, the viewer becomes an intimate witness to the pressures of financial and family success.

In The Journey (2006), Gygli King creates an enigmatic scene in which a knight boards a small boat to enter into the company of two elegantly dressed women. The male figure, heroic in his suit of armor, is nonetheless awkward in the vulnerability of leaving one land for a distant location and of doing so amid uncertain company. Significantly, overlooking the action is a man who is surely the knight himself but in another guise. While his face dissolves with the effects of terminal illness, he oversees the action with an uneven smile of simple acceptance of the progress of fateful narrative. Based on Gygli King’s interpretation of the heroic personality of her recently deceased brother, The Journey functions as a bittersweet reminder of the qualified relief of reminiscence after a loved one’s passing. Likewise, Cappie (1997) is an affecting memorial, a portrait on an irregularly shaped canvas of the artist’s dying mother amid extravagant lilies. In this work, Gygli King’s longstanding interest in flowers and figure studies combine in a grand scale to inspire consideration of the paradoxical fusing of strength and fragility that exists in all living things.

Pleasure and pain are mutually inflected; indeed, they are often a matched set. Ultimately, the Culture Series suggests the generative character of anxiety as a force that underlies much of our personal experience and our relationships to cultural circumstance. Gygli King is determined and brave. Her work demonstrates that one of life’s most important secrets lies in learning to develop the courage to accept the diversity of our histories in manners that are intense and creative and without the prejudice of our judgments.

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Craig Owens, “The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism Part 2,” October 13 (Summer 1980): 80.

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Culture Series, Cappie, 1997, oil on canvas, 108 x 80 Culture Series, Dandy and Dog, 1997, oil on canvas, 45 x 51

Culture Series, The Journey, 2006, oil on canvas, 108 x 120 Culture Series, Elsi, die seltsame Magd, 1997, oil on canvas, 72 x 72

Culture Series, The Internet, 2006, oil on canvas, 104 x 114.5 Culture Series, Television, 1999, oil on canvas, 67 x 92

Culture Series, The Family Tree, 1997, oil on canvas, 109 x 108 Culture Series, The Family, 2005, oil on canvas, 82 x 101

Marcia Gygli King: The Culture Series The University of Texas at San Antonio / January 28 – March 1. 2009 Exhibition Checklist Mother’s Hand, 1993 oil on canvas, 30.5 x 41.75”

Culture Series, The Family, 2005 oil on canvas, 82 x 101”

Parable of Life II, 1993 oil stick on paper, 52 x 72”

Culture Series, The Internet, 2006 oil on canvas, 104 x 114.5”

Tribute to Cappie, 1993 acrylic and oil stick on paper, 85.25 x 105”

Culture Series, The Journey, 2006 oil on canvas, 108 x 120”

Culture Series, Cappie, 1997 oil on canvas, 108 x 80”

Culture Series, Fame, 2008 oil on canvas, 120 x 156”

Culture Series, Dandy and Dog, 1997 oil on canvas, 45 x 51” Culture Series, Elsi, die seltsame Magd, 1997 oil on canvas, 72 x 72” Culture Series, The Family Tree, 1997 oil on canvas, 109 x 108” Culture Series, Heritage, 1997 oil on canvas, styrofoam, epoxy and acrylic, painting: 109 x 103”; sculpture: 36 x 36” Culture Series, Advertising, 1998 oil on canvas, 92 x 67” Culture Series, Television, 1999 oil on canvas, 67 x 92” Culture Series, Seduction, 2001 oil on canvas, 91 x 67.5”

Culture Series, Fame, 2008, oil on canvas, 120 x 156

Marcia Gygli King MFA, The University of Texas at San Antonio Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC BA (English), Smith College, Northampton, MA ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS

2009 San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX

Southwest School of Art & Craft, San Antonio, TX

The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 2005 Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, San Antonio, TX 2003 Gallery 668, Greenwich, NY 2002 Gallery Camino Real, Boca Raton, FL 2001 Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn, NY 2000 San Antonio Art League Museum, San Antonio, TX

Parchman Stremmel Galleries, San Antonio, TX 1999 Kouros Gallery, New York, NY 1996 Arts Academy of Eastern Maryland, MD 1995 The Guild Hall Museum, Easthampton, NY

Renee Fotouhi Fine Art, Easthampton, NY 1994 Hal Katzen Gallery, New York, NY 1992 Hal Katzen Gallery, New York, NY 1990 Katzen Brown Gallery, New York, NY 1989-90 Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH 1989 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

Valerie Miller Gallery, Palm Desert, CA 1988 Katzen Brown Gallery, New York, NY

Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Wallace Wentworth Gallery, Washington, DC 1987 Fervor Gallery, New York, NY 1986 Parker Smalley Gallery, New York, NY

Manhattan Marymount College, New York, NY 1985 White Columns Gallery, New York, NY 1984 McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX

Mattingly Baker Gallery, Dallas, TX 1981 Rutgers University, Douglas College, New Brunswick, NJ 1980 Charleton Gallery, San Antonio, TX 1975 McNamara O’Connor Museum, Victoria, TX 1974

Spectrum 16 Gallery, San Antonio, TX 1973 Faulkner’s Gallery, Washington, DC 1970 Camden House Gallery, San Antonio, TX

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PUBLIC ART COMMISSION

1995 MTA Commission for Creative Stations, Jay Street/Borough Hall Station, Brooklyn, NY

Resume GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2008 Summer Exhibition, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY 2005 Gallery Artists, Gallery 688, Greenwich, NY 2004 New York Show, Opelousas Museum of Art, Opelousas, LA 1999 Botanical Inspirations, Metropolitan Life Gallery, New York, NY 1997 Flowers, MB Modern, New York, NY

Coast to Coast, MD Modern, Houston, TX 1996 Earth, Gathering of the Tribes, New York, NY 1991 Frame Up, Fine Arts Center, Kingston, RI 1989 Insistent Landscape, Security Pacific Corp. Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

The Nature of the Beast, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY

A XX Century Bestiary, Renee Fotouhi Gallery, New York, NY 1987 The Artist’s Mother: Portraits and Homages, The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC

& Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY 1986 Landscape in the Age of Anxiety, Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York, Bronx, NY

& the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH

Dog Days of August, Littlejohn Smith Gallery, New York, NY

Oso Bay Biennial Show, Corpus Christi, TX 1985 Prints & Drawings, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH

Examination of Contamination, Parker Smalley Gallery, New York, NY

Update 84-85, White Columns, New York, NY

Sculpture Center, New York, NY 1984 Charancahau Gallery, Corpus Christi, TX

WCA 1984 National Exhibition [Women’s Caucus for Art], Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 1983 Fauna: The Animal Ally, Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York, Bronx, NY

New Trends Show, Ericson Gallery, New York, NY

The Artist and the Quilt, Museum Traveling Exhibition 1977 Contemporary Issues on Paper, Women’s Caucus for the Arts, Women’s Building, Los Angeles, CA

20th Annual Eight State Exhibition, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma, OK 1976

21st Annual Delta Art Exhibition, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR 1975 18th Annual Eight State Exhibition, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma, OK

LECTURES

2009 The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 2008 McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX 1995 Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1993 New Museum, New York, NY 1991 Dallas Museum, Dallas, TX 1988 Whitney Museum, Phillip Morris, New York, NY 1988 Lehman College, City University of New York, Bronx, NY 1987 Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA

Résumé

1986 1985 1984

1978 1976

1964 1960-76

WRITINGS 1976-77

Corpus Christi State University, Corpus Christi, TX Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX Panel on Women in the Arts, (represented Southwest USA), Alexandria, VA University of Texas, Division of Continuing Education, San Antonio, TX Founder/Director of Docent Program, McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX Docent, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Visual Arts Critic, Express News Publishing, Co., San Antonio, TX

AWARDS & HONORS 2000 Artist of the Year, 2000, San Antonio Art League, San Antonio, TX 1979 Outstanding Women in San Antonio, Women’s Political Caucus 1977 International Women’s Year, Panel on Status of Women, Houston, TX 1976

James Kirby National Memorial Award, Texas Watercolor Society

Women in San Antonio Art, Institute Mexicano de Intercambio Cultural 1972 First Purchase Prize, Texas Watercolor Society 1971 Best of Show, Texas Watercolor Society

Ethel T. Drought Memorial Award, San Antonio Art League 1970 Annual Z. T. Scott Award & Circuit, Texas Fine Arts Association 1963 Brewer’s Digest Award, Lone Star Brewery

VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES

1995 Marcia Gygli King, Guild Hall Museum Exhibition, Easthampton, NY

First Light (interview), Roy S. Teicher, L.T.V. Public Access, Easthampton, NY 1990 Signals (interview), Channel 4, London, England 1987 Visions: Four New York Artists, Veronica Herman, producer

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MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY

Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

Guild Hall, Easthampton, NY

Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX

National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC

Newark Museum, Newark, NJ

Robert College, Istanbul, Turkey

San Antonio Art League, San Antonio, TX

San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX

CORPORATE COLLECTIONS

Best Products, Richmond, VA

British Petroleum, Cleveland, OH

Cadillac Fairview, Dallas, TX

Carrington, Coleman, Soleman & Blumenthal, Dallas, TX

Clear Channel Communications, San Antonio, TX

Continental Life Insurance Corp., New York, NY

Goldman Sachs Co., New York, NY

Laurel School, Shaker Heights, OH

Phillip Morris Co., New York, NY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books and Catalogs Barnes, Molly. How to Get Hung: Practical Guide for Emerging Artists. Boston: Journey Editions, 1994.

Castelli Sundell, Nina. Landscape in the Age of Anxiety. Cleveland, OH: College Art Gallery and Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, 1986.

Coller, Barbara, John E. Gedo, and Donald B. Kuspit. The Artist’s Mother; Portraits and Homages. Huntington, NY: Heckscher Museum, 1987.

Danto, Arthur C. Marcia King and the Symbolic Language of Frames. East Hampton, NY: Guild Hall Museum, 1995.

Digby, John. Collage. London: Thames and Hudson, 1985.

Johnstone, Mark. Insistent Landscapes. Los Angeles: Security Pacific Gallery, 1990.

McCombie, Mel. Marcia Gygli King. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1989.

Munro, Eleanor. American Women Artists. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997.

-----. Marcia Gygli King, Relief Painting, 1982-1984. San Antonio, TX: Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, 1984.

Notable Women of Texas. Irving, TX: Emerson Publishing, 1976.

Robinson, Charlotte. The Artist and the Quilt. New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1983.

Sayre, Henry M. A World of Art. 2nd. Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.

-----. A World of Art. 5th. Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2008.

Solomon, Holly and Alexandra Anderson. Living With Art. New York: Rizzoli, 1988.

Sterling, Susan Fischer. Women Artists National Museum of Women in the Arts. New York: Abbeville Publishing Group, 1995.

Who’s Who of American Women. 17th Edition. New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who’s Who, 1991-1992.

Articles and Reviews “Art Talk.” The East Hampton Independent 10 May 1995.

Braff, Phyllis. “Images Quite Alike and Quite Unalike.” The New York Times 21 May 1995.

Contemporary Quarterly (Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art) Winter 1986.

Cross, Jennifer. “Different Themes in Two Artists.” Spectacles (The Southampton Press) 26 May 1995.

Cullinan, Helen. “Landscape Given New Meaning.” Cleveland Plain Dealer 17 January 1987.

-----. “Paintings & Frames Share Spotlight.” Cleveland Plain Dealer 17 Jan 1987.

Cummings, Mary. “Joint Effort: Guild Hall and School In Artistic Symbiosis.” The Arts (The Southampton Press) 4 May 1995.

Curtis, Cathy. “Art.” Los Angeles Times 12 February 1990.

“Exhibit Talk.” The East Hampton Star 11 May 1995.

Freidman, Shirley M. “Needlework Artistry Comes Alive at Quilt Exhibition.” The Sunday Star Ledger 29 January 1984.

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“Gallery Talks.” The Southampton Press 11 May 1995.

Glueck, Grace. “Update 1984-85.” The New York Times 25 June 1985.

Goddard, Dan R. “Artist Draws on Both San Antonio and New York Influences.” San Antonio Express-News 13 October 2000.

-----. “Top Tickets — Art.” San Antonio Express-News 18 December 2005.

Goren Solon, Marcia. “Review.” San Antonio Light 30 September 1984.

“Guild Hall to Spotlight Marcia Gygli King.” Summer Life (East End Arts) 5 May 5, 1995.

Henry, Gerrit. “Review of Exhibitions, New York, Marcia Gygli King at Hal Katzen.” Art in America 80.12 (December 1992): 118.

House and Garden 155.10 (October, 1983): 20-22.

Johnson, Carol Siri. Art BEAT too (The East Hampton Independent) 10 May 1995.

Kantrowitz, Barbara. “Saluting Women’s Work.” Philadelphia Inquirer 1 March 1984.

Kass, Arden. “The Artists’ Quilts New Feminist Symbol: Collaboration Triumphs in Texas Show.” New Art Examiner 11.2 (November 1983).

Kessler, Pamela. “The Frame Game.” The Washington Post 8 January 1988.

“King and Zakanitch, Exploring Pattern and Decoration.” The Sag-Harbor Express 4 May 1995.

Mead, Julia C. “Openings Galore, We Catch A Few.” The East Hampton Star 11 May 1995.

Nahas, Dominique. “Marcia Gygli King at Kouros Gallery.” Art in America 87.9 (September 1999).

Rian, Jeffrey. “Marcia Gygli King at Fervor.” Art in America (February 1988): 148-9.

Rosenbaum, Susan. “News of the Schools.” The East Hampton Star 6 April 1995.

Ruhling, Nancy. “The Garden Through an Artist’s Eye.” Newsday 21 June 2001: B14+.

Russell, John. “Marcia Gygli King.” The New York Times 19 February 1988, sec. Arts.

Skidmore Sasser, Elizabeth. “Golden Dogs of the West.” Southwest Art November 1985: 84-92.

Slivka, Ross C.S. “From the Studio.” The East Hampton Star 1 June 1995.

“Two Solo Exhibits.” The East Hampton Independent 3 May 1995.

Vroom, George. “Marcia Gygli King.” Art World February 1988.

-----. “Marcia Gygli King.” Art World March 1987.

-----. “Marcia Gygli King.” Art World January 1985.

Wolberg Weiss, Marion. “Art Commentary.” Dan’s Paper (Bridgehampton, NY) 26 May 1995.

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Spontaneous Combustion at the Southwest School of Art & Craft is made possible with support from Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts, City of San Antonio, Texas Commission on the Arts, and Members of the Southwest School of Art & Craft.

Botanical Paintings at the San Antonio Museum of Art is made possible with support from the Marcia and Otto Koehler Foundation and Miss Gloria Galt.

The Culture Series at The University of Texas at San Antonio Art Gallery is made possible with support from Mrs. Litsa Tsitsera, Texas Commission on the Arts, and Elizabeth Huth Coates Charitable Foundation of 1992.

Special programming associated with Marcia Gygli King: Forty Years is made possible with support from Southwest Airlines.

The curators also extend gratitude to Art Incorporated; Clear Channel Communications; Rollin W. King, Jr.; Peggy and Lowry Mays; Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Prassel; Dr. Marion Oettinger, Jr., The Bob and Betty Kelso Director at the San Antonio Museum of Art; Prof. Gregory Elliott, Chair, Department of Art and Art History, The University of Texas at San Antonio; and of course, to Marcia Gygli King.

Acknowledgments 59