High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975

A traveling exhibition that explores a time of radical new directions in abstract painting
February 15 - April 22, 2007
Opening Reception February 15, 6 - 8 pm
National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street
New York City

Most art-historical accounts of the late 1960s and early ’70s say little about painting, or only discuss its relationship to Minimalism (citing Robert Ryman, Frank Stella, and Brice Marden, among others). Yet many artists during these same years were exploring radical new directions in abstract painting: pulling painting apart, moving it off the stretcher and onto the floor, creating new shapes and structures, using an entire room or the human body as a canvas.

Influenced by social change and the burning political issues of the day, artists such as Jo Baer, Yayoi Kusama, Alan Shields, Lee Lozano, Richard Tuttle, and Mary Heilmann created works of great joy, passion, fury, and imagination, expanding conventional concepts of what “painting” could mean. Nearly half the abstract painters whose work is presented in High Times, Hard Times are women, many dismissed at the time by influential art critics, who saw them only as creating an eccentric expression that had some limited value and not as leaders in the renewal of a medium as important as painting. African-American artists such as Al Loving, Joe Overstreet, Howardena Pindell, and Jack Whitten, and artists from other countries who lived temporarily in New York (Kusama, Blinky Palermo, Cesar Paternosto, Franz Erhard Walther), were similarly denied official recognition.

The exhibition begins with a moment of exuberance, when painting escaped the confines of Minimalism in the mid-’60s, and ends with it put back together in an expanded framework in the mid-’70s, when painters such as Elizabeth Murray and Joan Snyder incorporated discoveries about structure, technique, and physicality into painting proper. High Times, Hard Times encompasses a period of great transformation—including experiments with surface and support, installation, and performance—and embodies its spirit of freedom and possibility.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an introduction by David Reed, an artist working in New York City; essays by guest curator Katy Siegel (professor of art history at Hunter College, CUNY), and by Dawoud Bey, Anna Chave, Robert Pincus-Witten and Marcia Tucker; and statements by a selection of artists in the exhibition.

High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975
February 15 - April 22, 2007

The National Academy Museum presents High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975 bringing together over forty significant works by thirty-seven artists living and working in New York between 1967 and 1975. Opening on February 15, 2006, the groundbreaking works presented in this exhibition were created by painters who courageously crossed disciplines to take a nontraditional approach to the medium.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s the New York art world was an exciting place to be. "Painting is dead!" was a popular slogan. New mediums such as performance and video art were developing, and sculpture was quickly expanding in many different directions. However, experimental abstract painting actually was thriving, energized by a diverse group of New York artists. Influenced by new artistic freedoms and the tumultuous political and social changes of the time, these pioneering artists created paintings of great joy, fury, and intellect.

High Times, Hard Times also reflects the impact on the art world of the civil rights struggle, student and anti-war activism, and the beginning of feminism. The works included in this exhibition represent some of the most experimental art of the time. These artists' re-examination of art through new approaches to the medium of painting was very much in keeping with the era's radical aesthetics and politics.

Half of the artists in the exhibition are women, several are African-American, and some are artists from other countries who lived temporarily in New York; many of whom were not recognized at the time or, conversely, were excluded from paintings' canonical history. These artists' identities are not incidental but essential to grasping the possibilities of the period. (Perhaps part of the reason painting at this time has been left out of the history books; subsequent painting revivals have been adamantly male-as Joan Snyder, a National Academician, complained about macho neo-expressionism's sudden revival of painting, "It wasn't 'neo' to us.")

The works in High Times, Hard Times are divided into groups that are at once formal and chronological. The works in the first group, dating from the late 1960s are large, rectangular, stretched canvases hung on the wall a format based on conventions challenged later in this exhibition-to elicit the mood of euphoria and optimism so prevalent in the late sixties.

In the second group, artists begin to take painting apart. These paintings are often super-thin or made of soft unsupported cloth and some come off the wall into the room, sit on the floor, or are suspended from the ceiling. The wild array of structures and formats take liberties with the medium of painting in ways that challenge its history and expand its future.

Installation and performance are emphasized in the third selection of works, stretching the elastic definition of painting even further, as painters experience the pressure and possibility of new mediums such as installation and performance. The artists use their bodies and the space around the physical projects, incorporating the viewer into the environment of the work. The performance pieces are documented by photographs or video and in some cases the original works have been recreated according to the artist's instructions. These works have an intensity and expansiveness that springs from a willingness to doubt fundamentally what a painting is.

Film and video exerted their own pull in the early seventies; many if not most avant-garde artists experimented with these new mediums. The fourth group of works includes paintings that reflect this influence. Using unusual techniques including spraying, iridescence and visual interference, the surfaces of these works suggest filmic effects such as speed, flicker, and distortion. Many of these painters also used film and video directly, and this section includes film and video works that connect with the paintings through their sense of color and movement.

No artistic culture could indefinitely sustain either the total possibility or the intense doubt of the early 1970s. By the mid-seventies, painters had returned to more traditional stretched-canvas formats, but many brought the innovations of deconstruction, performance and installation with them. Some of the work in this final group carries with it a frankly elegiac mood marking the end of the previous moment of limitless horizons. Other paintings are infused with bold color, a celebration of paint's physical properties, and even imagery.

While the exhibition's ending represents a "return" to more traditional forms of painting, it captures not only the discoveries of earlier experiments, but also the tremendous opening-up of painting in the 1970s. With the distance now of more than thirty-five years comes an opportunity to bring new research and perspective to the history of the time. High Times, Hard Times proposes to insert a new critical perspective on the subject, and equally valuable, the opportunity for audiences to have a fresh look at work sometimes little seen since it was first exhibited - and completely unseen by a whole generation of viewers. The paintings in this exhibition connect our present moment to a rich and exciting past that continues to resonate today.

Jo Baer
Lynda Benglis
Dan Christensen
Roy Colmer
Mary Corse
David Diao
Manny Farber
Louise Fishman
Guy Goodwin
Ron Gorchov
Harmony Hammond
Mary Heilmann
Ralph Humphrey
Jane Kaufman
Harriet Korman
Yayoi Kusama
Al Loving
Lee Lozano
Ree Morton
Elizabeth Murray
Joe Overstreet
Blinky Palermo
Cesar Paternosto
Howardena Pindell
Dorothea Rockburne
Carolee Schneemann
Alan Shields
Kenneth Showell
Joan Snyder
Lawrence Stafford
Pat Steir
Richard Tuttle
Richard Van Buren
Michael Venezia
Franz Erhard Walther
Jack Whitten
Peter Young

Thursday, March 1, 2007, 6:45 pm
Painting in New York City, Then and Now
A panel discussion moderated by exhibition curator Katy Siegel
National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Avenue
New York City

Distinguished painters David Diao, Guy Goodwin, Mary Heilmann, and Dorothea Rockburne discuss painting in New York City during the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. Artist Deborah Kass joins the group with a perspective on how the legacy of that moment shapes painting today.

Admission: $5, free for all students, Friends of the Academy, and Academicians as well as members of iCI. Reservations required, please call 212.369.4880, ext. 300, or email Esta dirección de correo electrónico está protegida contra los robots de spam, necesita tener Javascript activado para poder verla .

Tuesday, April 10, 2007, 6:30 - 8:00 pm
High Times, Hard Times: Painting and Politics in New York City, 1967-1975
A panel discussion moderated by exhibition curator Katy Siegel with Howardena
Pindell, Anna Chave and others
The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
New York City

Admission: $8, free for all students, New School faculty, staff, and alumni with valid ID; as well as members of iCI, the National Academy Museum, and National Academicians

A panel discussion on issues of politics, race, and feminism in the art world as they emerged during the mid-’60s when, influenced by social change and the burning political issues of the day, artists such as Jo Baer, Lynda Benglis, Mary Heilmann, Yayoi Kusama, Lee Lozano, Howardena Pindell, Alan Shields, and Richard Tuttle created works of great joy, passion, fury, and imagination, expanding conventional concepts of what “painting” could mean. The panel will also look at the repercussions today of that historical moment of exuberance forty years ago, when painting escaped the confines of a prescriptive modernism.

Panel discussion is organized by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, iCI, and the National Academy Museum.

Admission: $8, free for all students, New School faculty, staff, and alumni with valid ID; as well as members of iCI, the National Academy Museum, and National Academicians