Robert Sussman

ROBERT SUSS M A N

DATE S T K .2 004

Curated by Thomas Nozkowski

f o r wa r d

We are honored to host this exhibition of New York painter Robert Sussman which

has been generously curated by fellow artist Tom Nozkowski. Sussman is a painter

who has established and helped a number of arts organizations over the years and

has received much admiration from his contemporaries, not only for such generosity

but also for his unique artistic voice, Nozkowski’s appreciation of Sussman’s painting

demonstrates just such admiration.

We appreciate that artists often work tirelessly without thought or concern for

exhibition. CUE is pleased to recognize such commitment by affording just such an

opportunity, thus celebrating the efforts of artists such as Robert Sussman.

I imagined that the biggest problem facing me in putting together a show of Robert

Sussman’s work would be deciding how to sample a forty year long career in a way

that illustrated its full range and depth. Whether to choose a snapshot of a moment

or two, or a more measured sampling of all the work, well, that is a problem.

The decision turns out to be not too hard to make. Given both the constraints

of space – we can include ten to twenty paintings here at the CUE Art Foundation

Gallery – and the happy and successful paintings made over the last year or so in

Sussman’s studio, this ensemble of recent work will stand perfectly as the sign of a

long and rich oeuvre.

“Happy” works: slightly unhinged, sweet but rowdy, good humored and more

than a little self conscious – these paintings know you are looking at them. They are

slightly dazed by their good luck to be out here today in a nice gallery and they are

very pleased to do some tricks. This isn’t just Paul Klee’s famous “taking a line… for a

walk,” everything rambles around in these paintings. Shapes, textures, colors and

compositions are hiking all over the place.

Their performance is a little scandalous, I think, in how they toy with so many of

the images of modern painting. These are, in a certain sense, cartoons of abstrac-

tion, the Walter Lantz version of the sublime. Howard Finster dealing with Clement

Greenberg instead of the New Testament.

Don’t get me wrong: Sussman is a sophisticated painter and as knowledgeable

about contemporary art as any artist I know. But I do think he has a very special

take on art, slightly distanced and really quite amused by it. Microscopes and tele-

scopes both make things look funny – it is only in normal range that we can lose our

sense of humor.

Funny is pretty much small beer by itself, but conflate it with some intricate

human system (like Formalism here or Democracy for Mark Twain) and you can get

something very rich, indeed. The best humor gives us a double vision of ourselves,

subverts our pretensions and, best of all, helps us see things new. Seeing things new

is the goal. The joke on the joke is that these pictures turn out to be very good

formally – yes – with their fabulously odd colors, complex shapes and fascinating

compositions.

Thomas Nozkowski

I was most influenced by abstract expressionists, so I favor experience over conceptu-

alization. The best thing a painting can do, for me, is to come up with something new

visually, something that gives me a new way of looking at a thing. I like the idea that

paintings can open eyes and change peoples’ understanding of what they see. Not to

be too grandiose about this, but I think the art of looking clearly, of seeing things

afresh, is the part of art that we can actually use in our lives.

I think a good work of art can be felt physically as you look at it. You can imagine

your body in the painting, or making the painting with your own hands, or feeling a

texture and the temperature of a color.

The fact that people have made and enjoyed paintings for thirty thousand years

speaks well for us and makes me feel optimistic when I paint – even when contempo-

rary events seem to warrant only negativity.

O n ce I thought that making images of things was arrogant. Now I believe otherwise,

that making pictures, of real and imagined objects, is the best thing in the world.

I like the atmosphere created by bright, high-keyed colors. For me, colors of equal

luminance are read as joyful.

Flat frontal shapes evoke a sense of physical immediacy. These shapes play with

“almost being.” They are more-or-less rectilinear, more-or-less biomorphic, more-or-

less something or other. “Almost” is a quality that is important to me, because it frees

people to take that “almost” image into any area -- from mundane and obvious

readings, to their most personal associations.

If I am interested in something in the world, I am interested in using it in my

paintings. Not just art objects and images, but all the stuff we deal with in our lives

can contribute meaningfully to making paintings. I also use a lot of imagery drawn

from the natural sciences, architecture, typography, maps, games and, of course, from

other artists.

I want to thank the CUE Art Foundation for this opportunity to show my

paintings and Thomas Nozkowski for helping me put this exhibition together.

Robert Suss m a n

B rooklyn, NY January 18, 2004

cu rator’s s tat e m e n t ar t i s t’s stat eme n t

U N T I T L E D

Acrylic on panel, 36" x 48", 2003

U N T I T L E D


U N T I T L E D


U N T I T L E D


U N T I T L E D


U N T I T L E D


U N T I T L E D


U N T I T L E D


U N T I T L E D


His sheet says 24 x 26 but that doesn't seem right

U N T I T L E D

Acrylic on panel, 24" x 36", 200 3

U N T I T L E D


U N T I T L E D


c u rator’ s b i ogra p h y

Thomas Nozkowski is a painter who has had over sixty one-person shows of his work

since 1979. His most recent exhibitions include a show of new work at the Max

Protetch Gallery (November, 2003) and a twenty-five year survey of his drawings at

the New York Studio School (January 2003). He is represented in the collections of

many museums including, The Addison Gallery of American Art, The Brooklyn

Museum, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The High Museum of Art, The Hirshhorn

Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of

Modern Art, The Phillips Collection, and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,

among others. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and has received the American Academy

of Arts and Letters Award in Painting. He is Professor of Painting at the Mason Gross

School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

art i s t ’s b i ogra p h y

Robert Sussman was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1943. He studied at the Art

Students League, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, New York University, and The

Cooper Union. In the seventies he helped to establish the Anonymous Artists of

America Cattle Ranch Inc., an artists’ commune in Red Wing, Colorado. After return-

ing to New York, his work was shown in numerous exhibitions in the U.S. and Canada.

From 1985 to 1989 he was a member and president of the 55 Mercer Street Gallery,

a cooperative gallery in New York’s SoHo. During the late eighties and early nineties

he taught at the Parsons School of Design. In 1990 he participated in the Triangle

Artists Workshop in Rhinebeck, New York. Articles about his paintings have appeared

in Ocular Magazine, 1981; Fredag (Danish Magazine for Literature, Culture and

Politics) November 1987 by Christian Juul Jessen; Hrymfaxe Kunsttidsskrift (Danish

Art Magazine), March 1995, article by Lars Aagaard-Mogensen.

c u e a r t fo u n d at io n m iss ion s tat e m e n t

CUE Art Foundation, a non-profit organization, provides educational programs

for young artists and aspiring art professionals in New York and from around the

country. These programs draw on the unique community of artists, critics, and

educators brought together by the Foundation’s season of exhibitions, public

lectures, and its in-gallery studio program. Gallery internships and stipends afford

the next generation of art professionals intimate, working knowledge of the art-

making and exhibition processes. CUE’s 2000 sq. ft. gallery and offices, located in

New York’s Chelsea gallery district, serves as the base for the various educational

programs conducted by CUE.

The Foundation’s exhibition season gives unknown or under-recognized

artists

professional exposure comparable to that offered by neighboring commercial

galleries, without the usual financial restraints. CUE does not promote a particular

school of artistic practice or regional bias; we only require that exhibiting artists

must either not have had a solo exhibition in a commercial venue, or have received

minimal recent public exposure.

CUE’s Advisory Council, an honorary group of artists and leading figures

from the arts education, applied arts, art history, and literary communities, has

the responsibility of selecting exhibition curators. The curators, in turn, nominate

artists to exhibit at CUE, and continue to play a role throughout the exhibition

process, helping the artists catalogue their work for exhibition. Both the Advisory

Council and the exhibition curators actively participate in the public lectures and

educational programs.

B OA RD O F DI R EC TO R S

Gregory Amenoff

Thomas G. Devine

Thomas K. Y. Hsu

Brian D. Starer

A DV I S O RY CO U N C I L

Gregory Amenoff

Vicky A. Clark

William Corbett

Petah Coyne

James Drake

Bruce Ferguson

Sanford Hirsch

Dana Hoey

G A L L E R Y DI REC TO R

Jeremy Adams

G A L L E R Y AS S I STA N T

Sandhini Poddar

AL L A RT WOR K © R O BE RT S US S M A N

C ATA LO G D ESI GNE D BY EL IZ ABE T H E LL I S

PR I NTE D I N C AN ADA

Documents

Robert Sussman