The Katonah Museum of Art presents “Here’s the Thing: The Single Object Still Life,” an exhibition that celebrates single objects, their closeup beauty, mystery and the one-on-one relationship, even the psychological involvement, that each artist reveals in depicting such solitary items.
Curated by acclaimed photorealist painter and printmaker Robert Cottingham, the exhibition includes more than 60 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, created between the late Nineteenth Century and the present, including works by Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Jasper Johns. It will be on view through June 29.
“Here’s the Thing” asks questions and inspires nostalgia. The single objects featured are familiar everyday, manufactured items: packaged goods, household appliances, utensils, prepared food, furniture, apparel, hardware, building materials and tools. It is things remembered from childhood or simple overlooked objects that are presented.
A prime example is Shimon Okshteyn’s graphite drawing “Iron,” in which his super-sized appliance reveals an abstraction pattern of the collected scratches, stains and scorches it has accrued over the years.
“There are myriad reasons why an artist might choose a particular object,” says Cottingham, “but often, the choice is based simply on convenience, and the appeal of an object close at hand.” He suspects that Richard Diebenkorn’s “Scissors” depict a tool in the artist’s studio, now transformed from “object” to “subject.” David Park’s “Sink” is another example of selection by convenience and familiarity. “I’m going to guess that the industrial sink depicted by Park actually occupied a corner of his studio,” Cottingham says. “In fact, my romantic leanings permit me to imagine the artist, upon completing this work, cleaning his brushes at its very subject.”
“Robert Cottingham has done a masterful curatorial job of guiding us to works of art that depict just the right ‘thing-ness’ of the objects chosen, and beg for a dialogue between viewer and artist,” says Neil Watson, executive director of the Katonah Museum of Art.
Most evident in the exhibition is the conceptual diversity of the artists. From the trompe l’oeil precision of John Haberle’s “Twenty Dollar Bill” to the delicacy and intimacy of Gunter Grass’s “Mit Brille Neuerdings (Eye Glasses)” to the structural monumentality of Donald Sultan’s “Domino, June 8, 1990,” each work reveals the unique philosophical leanings of its creator.
Cottingham’s own recent still lifes of cameras and typewriters reflect his fascination with the everyday object as the subject for art. His oil painting “Spartus Full-Vue” appears in “Here’s the Thing.”
The Katonah Museum of Art is at 134 Jay Street, Route 22. For information, 914-232-9555 or www.katonahmuseum.org .
