ART-PRESENTATION: Caro & Olitski 1965-68

Sir Anthony Caro and Jules Olitski, Exhibition View, Courtesy Paul Kasmin GallerySir Anthony Caro and Jules Olitski’s decades-long friendship took root in 1963 when, after years of mutual admiration, both artists joined the faculty of the Art Department at Bennington College in Vermont, an area also home to David Smith and Kenneth Noland. During their time teaching in Bennington, the Fire Department lent its garage to Caro for studio space. Olitski and Caro would participate in each other’s discussions with students about various topics of art.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Paul Kasmin Gallery Archive

At Bennington, the artists opened up new areas in abstraction, exploring novel methods and materials that established them as radically distinct from their peers. Caro and Olitski’s achievements in surface, color and form through unusual, industrial elements enabled them to emerge as successors of the first generation of the New York School, and, in turn, inspire later generations of abstract artists. The exhibition “Caro & Olitski: 1965-1968, Painted Sculptures and The Bennington Sprays” at Paul Kasmin Gallery celebrates the dialogue, exchange of ideas and lasting friendship between British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro and American painter Jules Olitski. The exhibition feature painted steel sculptures by Caro and never-before exhibited “Spray paintings” by Olitski. The exhibition  feature Olitski’s the never before exhibited “Bennington Sprays”, including “Pink Hoodoo” (1965), “Flame Out” (1965) and “Tut Pink” (1965). The “Sprays”, one of the artist’s most well-known and pioneering achievements, were conceived after a visit to Kenneth Noland’s studio with his students and Caro present. To make these works, Olitski would point multiple, industrial spray guns filled with acrylic paint at a canvas stretched onto the floor.  Through different angles and heights of the spray guns, the paint is rendered almost holographic in appearance, suggesting weightlessness and diffused light, an expression of pure color.  On the Sprays, the art critic Clement Greenberg wrote, “What makes Olitski’s paint surface a factor in the creation of major art–is the way in which one of the profoundest pictorial imaginations of this time speaks through it”. Caro’s “Green Sleeper” (1965), first exhibited at The Hayward Gallery in London in 1969, is part of Olitski’s personal Collection. Unlike other abstract sculptors of the time, Caro eschewed traditional art materials, creating sculptures with found steel, plates and beams welded into angular assemblages; and made works that are positioned directly onto the floor without a traditional platform or fixed center. His sculptures enter the space of the viewer allowing one to move freely around its brightly colored and geometric edges.

Info: Paul Kasmin Gallery, 515 West 27th Street, New York, Duration: 7/9-25/10/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu 10:00-18:00, Fri 10:00-17:00, www.paulkasmingallery.com

Sir Anthony Caro and Jules Olitski, Exhibition View, Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery
Sir Anthony Caro and Jules Olitski, Exhibition View, Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery

 

 

Sir Anthony Caro and Jules Olitski, Exhibition View, Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery
Sir Anthony Caro and Jules Olitski, Exhibition View, Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery

 

 

Sir Anthony Caro and Jules Olitski, Exhibition View, Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery
Sir Anthony Caro and Jules Olitski, Exhibition View, Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery

 

 

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