Louise Fishman 2015

Louise Fishman

cover 9-4-15.indd 1

Cheim & Read

Cheim & Read

Louise Fishman 9/22/15 1:09 PM

Louise Fishman

Cheim & Read 2015

SHE LOOKED BACK Alex Greenberger For Louise Fishman, a sense of history hangs over every painting she makes. There is first, and perhaps most importantly, Fishman’s personal history—her life and art have been inseparable since she began working in the ’50s. In fact, it’s possible to track Fishman’s mood, outlook, and, in some cases, political views just by looking at abstract paintings.

There are, for example, Fishman’s “Angry” paintings, made during the early ’70s, that subvert the art-historical narrative of masculine abstraction by lashing out against it. In Angry Louise (1973), Fishman writes the painting’s title in mustard-yellow letters over muted blobs and then proceeds to scrawl, in acrylic paint, underneath it, “SERIOUS RAGE.” (She literally underlines these words to drive the point home.) When she made this series, Fishman, like many other Americans, was reacting to the invisibility of women that had been established and cultivated by the patriarchy. Viewers hardly need to understand the American political climate at the time, though, to know that Fishman was, indeed, irate. If nothing else, viewers can tell as much by the passion and angst—the way these words are scratched into the painting’s surface, defiling the pure abstraction that (male) modernists so dearly worshipped as though it were a religion.

In the decades since, Fishman’s work has become less inflamed, though the artist herself and her style remain as passionate as ever. Works from the ’80s featured darker, moodier palettes that continue throughout Fishman’s oeuvre. In 1988, following a trip to Auschwitz with a friend who had survived the Holocaust, Fishman took dirt mixed with cremated human remains from the Pond of Living Ashes. Upon her return, she used it in her paintings, which then turned shades of navy blue and moss green in response. They are, as Miriam Seidel has called them, “presence[s] of the dead”1 and a complete turnaround from the “Angry” paintings of ten years earlier.

Not all of Fishman’s paintings are downbeat. She has also done paintings in celebration of Passover, and, in a more recent series, done between 2010 and 2012, Fishman continued to use blue, this time with more energy. In Calle Maria Callas (2012), a vertical smear of azure oil paint is tempered by another brown-inflected teal stroke parallel to it. On either side are thin, brown strokes. The painting takes its name from a street in Venice, where Fishman and her partner Ingrid Nyeboe went just months before the painting was made. Here, blue, though still muted, evokes a wavelet in a Venetian canal as seen from above—a much less angry or somber topic, indeed, than the aforementioned works. However different the Venice series may be from the “Angry” paintings or even the Auschwitz-inspired ones, it still results from Fishman’s experience as she traveled.

Fishman’s most recent work stems from three more European journeys, all with Nyeboe—a second residency in Venice, in 2013, a 2014 trip to Denmark, and a stay in London that same year. Nyeboe is Danish, so Fishman’s trip to Denmark was, in some ways, intertwined with another personal history. As the couple visited the places where Nyeboe was raised, Fishman barely slept, partially because she was so excited, and partially because the sun did not set until midnight. This was summer in Denmark, after all, and it was one of the most exciting times of the year to be there.

Among the trip’s most thrilling adventures was an outing to Skagen, a city at the northernmost tip of Denmark where two bodies of water converge and, incidentally, where an artists’ colony was based in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fishman described standing on the beach as the chilly waters came into shore underneath her feet. She could not come up with the words to describe the experience; she left it at, “I stood there. I was stunned.”2 In her studio, she now keeps a photograph of Skagen’s beaches pinned to her wall.

While in London, Fishman saw two shows about J.M.W. Turner’s late work—one at the National Gallery, and the other at the Tate Britain. She was impressed by the way the 19thcentury British painter experimented so freely toward the end of his life. As his life went on, his style got even looser and more radical, and so too did Fishman’s.

The following year, Fishman had knee surgery. In the months leading up to the operation, she prepared by painting, knowing that, for a long time afterward, she would not be able to work. She rapidly made paintings, many of which are horizontal. The allusions to the 2014 trips to Europe are less obvious than in the previous Venice series, perhaps because she was working quickly to paint the essence of being in Denmark, Italy, and England.

One work in this vein is The Foot Upon the Earth (2014), in which swaths of sea-green paint appear to be meeting in the middle of a canvas. The white prime underneath remains visible in the top portion of the painting, and it seems that these massive blue strokes are about to engulf the white area. Looked at another way, the white is Fishman’s foot, and the two blue areas coming from the left and right are the waves of Skagen.

But Fishman does not title the work Skagen. This painting’s title, like many others

by Fishman, is a hint—a small nudge that allows viewers to come up with their own interpretations. In some ways, the answer, if there is one, to The Foot Upon the Earth and many others in this series may be the title of another painting: As Near as Memory (2014), which features thin, black strokes that run down the canvas. In the background is an outof-focus clay-and blue-colored form that suggests something just barely tangible. Time has buried an experience once so vivid. Try as we might, it’s difficult to reclaim it.

Fishman’s paintings have been compared to excavations, and fittingly, after she recovered from her surgery, she started to go back through her archives as she prepared for two retrospectives—one at the ICA, in Philadelphia, the other at the Neuberger Museum of Art. She began to reconstruct her own personal history piece by piece and, along the way, she rediscovered parts of her life and oeuvre that she had forgotten.

The paintings in this new body of work are densely layered, perhaps in response to Fishman’s reconsideration of her own life and work as being a group of experiences, one piled on top of another. One of the most thickly layered works in this new body is

Sven Jesper (2015), which Fishman named for Nyeboe’s deceased brother and which she considers her finest work to date. Unevenly mixed gray paint is pulled across the canvas vertically and horizontally to create a grid-like structure. But then Fishman removes parts of the paint. She allows the vertical and the horizontal strokes to mix, intertwining the layers with each other and making them inseparable. The background and the foreground are now the same, just as how, when she was making this painting, Fishman’s past and present were coming together, merging all around her like the waters of Skagen. *** Three of the most colorful paintings in this body of work have historical allusions.

Kreisleriana (2014) features swatches of burnt umber, dandelion yellow, and hot red that would seem to evoke floorboards, but, in actuality, refer to the finger acrobatics a pianist must perform when playing a 19th-century Friedrich Schumann piece of the same name. (Fishman has a thing for pianos—My Petrof, a blue-gray, gridded work, is named for her own.)

But then there are also All of Her Colors and For GGG, both dedicated to her mother, Gertrude Fisher-Fishman. Fishman’s mother was a painter, but she, as Fishman explained, was “more Matisse-prone”—she preferred warm colors and expressivity. In a homage to her mother’s painting style, Fishman paints with sky blue, custard yellow, and fiery red. Not content to simply let the colors contrast one another, Fishman then pulls the paint across the canvas—up, down, to the left, diagonally to the right—with the dynamism of an athlete.

Fishman’s mother and aunt studied with art educator and collector Alfred C. Barnes, and Fishman grew to love art through Barnes in multiple ways. For one, her mother had books

by Barnes around her house, so Fishman was exposed to such artists as Titian, Cézanne, Matisse, and Soutine at a young age. She also visited the Barnes Foundation and described spending a lot of time there as a young artist looking at paintings by Cézanne and Matisse.

Barnes had been schooled by John Dewey, who preached that art education should primarily be taught through experience.3 Almost accidentally, Fishman had learned to love art through the Dewey method.

In his “Notes of a Painter,” Matisse writes that expression is the goal of painting. “The chief function of color,” Matisse explains, “should be to serve expression as well as possible.”4 By experiencing Matisse’s paintings for extended periods of time, Fishman has taken this to heart. These Lines, These Colors, This Silence (2014) is something like Matisse by way of Franz Kline—jet-black lines traverse the canvas as various other colors and strokes create busy composition. The white canvas, which remains visible in patches, halts the visual commotion, almost like the unexpected silence that the painting’s title so poetically evokes.

Fishman says Kline is one of her heroes for the way that he, like Joan Mitchell, used color to create what she terms “architecture,” or three-dimensional forms on a flat surface resulting from the thick application of paint. Nevertheless, and somewhat surprisingly, Fishman also says that the Abstract Expressionists are not often on her mind. They were at first—she recalls having seen photographs of them in ARTnews’ “Artist Paints a Picture” series, in which artists were shown working in their studio, and that it was these articles that made her want to be an artist, not an athlete. (Fishman said that, as a high school student, her first career ambitions was to become a basketball player.)

Sometimes her paintings seem to refer to Abstract Expressionist styles. Arcanum (2015), with its black stroke cutting the painting in two, seems to allude to Barnett Newman’s work, whose “zips” bisect pure planes of color. Margate (2015) has thickly layered bluish whites that recall the sculptural quality of Willem de Kooning’s canvases. But rather than striving for something purely formal, as the Abstract Expressionists did, Fishman opts for something more perceptual—something more in the vein of Agnes Martin, whose gridded paintings made use of subtle coloristic shifts. Martin’s paintings are best seen in person, and so are Fishman’s; viewers can only realize their paintings’ full effect when standing in front of them.

In the past, Fishman has also been compared to Dorothea Rockburne, Mary Heilmann, and Elizabeth Murray, all of whom are female abstract painters of a similar age to Fishman.5 All three artists also engage with the perceptual qualities of paint on some level—Rockburne’s

irregularly shaped canvases, Heilmann’s blocky shapes, and Murray’s blobs of flashy color play with how abstract forms can be used to determine space. It could also be said that, on some level or another, all three women and Fishman are in dialogue with and in opposition to the coldness of Minimalism, which had become en vogue when they started becoming mature artists. Their interest in perception is a warmer one than Minimalism’s, and often quite literally. Rockburne, Heilmann, Murray, and Fishman all feel more comfortable with a wider color palette than tones of black and white. Nevertheless, Fishman plays it old school—her work is more in line with Martin’s you-had-to-be-there mentality than with the formal precision of a Rockburne or a Heilmann.

Readers of this catalogue can only get a vague idea of what 9/11 Redux (2013) looks like when seen in person. Made on the twelfth anniversary of 9/11, the painting is a confusion of forms—black paint pulled both left and right, aquamarine paint left to drip down the canvas, white paint wiped away to reveal blackness under it. As a result, there’s a visceral chaos about it all. The painting evokes a memory of grief, with a distant twinge of life flying out of control, yet however far off that feeling may be, it becomes present once a year.

History returns with a vengeance. *** In 1990, a fire in Fishman’s studio destroyed most of what she owned. Among the things she lost was a major painting, which had never been photographed. Fishman was traumatized.

She would wake in the middle of the night sobbing. She could not work; she could not function. And so, one year later, she left upstate New York briefly for Galisteo, New Mexico, where Martin was living. Fishman would see Martin walking from her house to her studio, and one day, Fishman mustered the courage to introduce herself. Martin proceeded to invite Fishman and her then-partner, Betsy Crowell, over for dinner.

“We spent time sitting in her studio,” Fishman said of her times with Martin. “I realized while she was sitting there… she never moved. She just looked that way, and then she looked that way. She was meditating. I thought, ‘Well, I know how to meditate.’”

When Fishman returned to New York, she began making books with grids in them.

The grid, which has been a vital part of her work since the late ’60s, was simply getting deconstructed and rebuilt each time. It is even present in this new body of work—there is 7 of Wands (2014), for example, with its brushy and unruly crosshatching. More than just a formal device, the grid has also allowed Fishman to meditate. It successfully brought her out of what she calls a “moral crisis,” and it continues to bring her to a spiritual state.

Fishman has now been practicing transcendental meditation for 25 years. She has gone on Buddhist retreats, and the influence from non-Western thinking has intensified her connection to Chinese scholar’s rocks, which she now collects and keeps in her studio.

These rocks, which can either be naturally occurring or manmade, were used by Chinese scholars for meditation. Their amorphous forms were prized for various qualities, among them asymmetries, texture, and representational metaphors—the same things art critics look for in a good abstract painting.6 With their twisting, nondescript formations, scholar’s rocks appealed to the Chinese for the way they make viewers stop in their tracks and think. The rocks require meditation because they have so many physical layers that they barely appear to make any sense at first. Just how could something like this appear in nature? Answers may never come, but they put viewers, Fishman included, into a mindset where they are able to think through difficult ideas with precision and concentration.

Just as Fishman could look at one of these rocks’ concavities and convexities for long periods of time, one could also meditate on a painting by Fishman. Sven Jesper is a puzzle because Fishman interweaves background and foreground by wiping away strokes. Image and Witness (2015) similarly has so many strokes of paint visibly laid on top of one another that it’s even possible to reconstruct how Fishman put the painting together, though only after staring at it for a while.

This emphasis on time appears again in Namarupa (2014), the painting with the most white space in this body of work. Named for a Buddhist concept,7 the painting’s title is an untranslatable Sanskrit word that refers to an essence of a being pinned down in a physical object. (For Western viewers, the closest comparison would be Catholicism’s transubstantiation, a rite in which Jesus Christ’s body is believed to be in bread and wine.)

There’s no painting in this series where Fishman’s hand is more obvious—viewers can see that she touched her fingers to paint, put her hand on the canvas, and pulled away quickly.

With her mark left behind, Fishman’s painting becomes a record of what used to be there and is no longer.

Seidel, Miriam. “Material Imperatives.” Art in America 81.9, 1993, page 98.

Fishman, Louise. In conversation with the author, August 5, 2015. All subsequent statements by the artist derive from this exchange.

3 Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Perigree, 2005, page 339. “Esthetic experience is a manifestation, a record and celebration of the life civilization, a means of promoting its development, and it is also the ultimate judgment upon the quality of civilization.”

4 Matisse, Henri. “Notes of a Painter.” In Art in Theory, 1900–1990, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood.

Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994, page 75.

5 Yau, John. “Why There Are Great Women Artists.” In Louise Fishman, exh. cat., New York, Cheim & Read Gallery, 2000, unpaginated.

6 Smith, Roberta. “Old Chinese Rocks: Rorschach Blots in 3 Dimensions.” New York Times, May 31, 1996.

Accessed August 23, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/31/arts/art-review-old-chinese-rocks-rorschachblots-in-3-dimensions.html 1 2

7

Namarupa is also a Hindu concept, but Fishman approached it through Buddhism.

The Day In Its Color 2013 oil on linen 34 x 20 in 86.4 x 50.8 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor and pastel on paper 4 x 9 7/8 in 10.2 x 25.1 cm

9/11 Redux 2013 oil on linen 70 x 88 in 177.8 x 223.5 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 3 7/8 x 8 1/4 in 9.8 x 21 cm

A Better Resurrection 2013 oil on linen 34 x 20 in 86.4 x 50.8 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 7 1/8 x 10 1/4 in 18.1 x 26 cm

Leeway 2014 oil on linen 66 x 39 in 167.6 x 99.1 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 4 x 9 7/8 in 10.2 x 25.1 cm

Easy Living 2014 oil on linen 64 x 34 in 162.6 x 86.4 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 10 1/4 x 14 1/8 in 26 x 35.9 cm

For GGG 2014 oil on linen 70 x 88 in 177.8 x 223.5 cm

Untitled 2011 watercolor on paper 6 x 9 in 15.2 x 22.9 cm

Namarupa 2014 oil on linen 66 x 39 in 167.6 x 99.1 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 6 x 4 in 15.2 x 10.2 cm

The Foot Upon the Earth 2014 oil on linen 70 x 88 in 177.8 x 223.5 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 7 1/8 x 10 1/4 in 18.1 x 26 cm

7 of Wands 2014 oil on linen 30 x 30 in 76.2 x 76.2 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 9 x 12 1/4 in 22.9 x 31.1 cm

All Her Colors 2014 oil on linen 66 x 57 in 167.6 x 144.8 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 14 1/8 x 10 1/4 in 35.9 x 26 cm

As Near As Memory 2014 oil on linen 50 1/2 x 30 in 128.3 x 76.2 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 19 7/8 x 14 in 50.5 x 35.6 cm

Time and Change 2014 oil on linen 50 x 30 in 127 x 76.2 cm

Untitled 2011 watercolor on paper 6 x 9 in 15.2 x 22.9 cm

Bel Canto 2014 oil on linen 74 x 88 in 188 x 223.5 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 4 x 6 in 10.2 x 15.2 cm

These Lines, These Colors, This Silence 2014 oil on linen 57 x 66 in 144.8 x 167.6 cm

Avalon 2014 oil on linen 66 x 57 in 167.6 x 144.8 cm

Namarupa 2014 oil on linen 66 x 57 in 167.6 x 144.8 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 9 x 10 in 22.9 x 25.4 cm

Credo 2015 oil on linen 72 x 88 in 182.9 x 223.5 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 4 1/4 x 9 3/4 in 10.8 x 24.8 cm

My Petrof 2015 oil on linen 57 x 66 in 144.8 x 167.6 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 12 1/4 x 16 1/4 in 31.1 x 41.3 cm

Rookery 2014 oil on linen 66 x 57 in 167.6 x 144.8 cm

Untitled 2013 watercolor on paper 7 1/8 x 6 3/4 in 18.1 x 17.1 cm

Rapscallion 2015 oil on linen 60 x 50 in 152.4 x 127 cm

Arcanum 2015 oil on linen 74 x 88 in 188 x 223.5 cm

Spuma di Mar 2013 watercolor on paper 18 x 18 in 45.7 x 45.7 cm

Margate 2015 oil on linen 72 x 88 in 182.9 x 223.5 cm

Battuto 2015 oil on linen 60 x 50 in 152.4 x 127 cm

Untitled 2011 watercolor on paper 6 x 9 in 15.2 x 22.9 cm

Sven Jesper 2015 oil on linen 74 x 88 in 188 x 223.5 cm

Kreisleriana 2015 oil on linen 57 x 56 in 144.8 x 142.2 cm

Spuma di Mar 2013 watercolor on paper 19 3/4 x 13 7/8 in 50.2 x 35.2 cm

Image and Witness 2015 oil on linen 65.98 x 55 in 167.6 x 139.7 cm

BIOGRAPHY 1939 Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1965 Moves to New York City 1988 Travels to Eastern Europe, visits Auschwitz and Terezin, Prague, Warsaw and Budapest

Lives and works in New York City

EDUCATION 1956–57

Philadelphia College of Art, Pennsylvania

1958

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia

1963

B.F.A. and B.S., Tyler School of Fine Arts, Elkins, Pennsylvania

1965

M.F.A., University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2016

Louise Fishman: A Retrospective, curated by Helaine Posner, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, New York Institute of Contemporary Art, curated by Ingrid Schaffner, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

2014 Louise Fishman, Gallery Nosco, London

2013 Louise Fishman: It’s Here—Elsewhere, Goya Contemporary, Baltimore, Maryland 2012 Louise Fishman, Cheim & Read, New York

Louise Fishman, John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York

Louise Fishman: Five Decades, Jack Tilton Gallery, New York 2010 Louise Fishman, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco 2009

2008

Louise Fishman: Among the Old Masters, The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida Cheim & Read, New York Louise Fishman: Between Geometry and Gesture, Galerie Kienzle & Gmeiner, Berlin

2007 Louise Fishman: The Tenacity of Painting, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 2006 Louise Fishman, Cheim & Read, New York 2005 Louise Fishman, Foster Gwin, San Francisco 2004 Louise Fishman, Recent Work, Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles

New York Abstract Painters George McNeil / Louise Fishman / 2004, Foster Gwin, San Francisco 2003 Louise Fishman, Cheim & Read, New York 2002 Louise Fishman, Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles 2001 Louise Fishman, Paule Anglim Gallery, San Francisco 2000 Louise Fishman, Cheim & Read, New York 1998 Louise Fishman, Cheim & Read, New York

Paule Anglim Gallery, San Francisco

1996 Robert Miller Gallery, New York 1995 Small Paintings, Robert Miller Gallery, New York 1994 Small Paintings 1992–1994, Bianca Lanza Gallery, Miami 1993 Robert Miller Gallery, New York 1992

Louise Fishman: Small Paintings, 1979–1992, Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia Drawings and Experimental Work, 1971–1992, Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia Louise Fishman: Paintings, 1986–1992, Morris Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Louise Fishman: Small Paintings, 1978–1992, Simon Watson, New York, preview of exhibition at Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia Louise Fishman: Small Paintings, Olin Art Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio

1991 Louise Fishman: New Paintings, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York 1989 Louise Fishman: New Paintings 1987–1989, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York

Remembrance and Renewal, Simon Watson Gallery, New York 1987 Louise Fishman and Andy Spence: Two from the Corcoran, Winston Gallery, Washington, DC 1986 Baskerville & Watson Gallery, New York 1985 Fishman/Sanderson, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina 1984 Baskerville & Watson Gallery, New York 1982 Oscarsson-Hood Gallery, New York

John Davis Gallery, Akron, Ohio 1980 Louise Fishman: Small Paintings The MacDowell Colony, 7/1980, Oscarsson-Hood

Gallery, New York

1979 Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York

Louise Fishman: Five Years, 55 Mercer, New York 1978 Diplomat’s Lobby, The Department of State, Washington, DC 1977 Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York 1974 Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York 1976 University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island

John Doyle Gallery, Chicago 1964 Philadelphia Art Alliance, Pennsylvania GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2014 In Residence: Contemporary Artists at Dartmouth, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth

College, Hanover, New Hampshire

Whitney Biennial 2014, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 2012

Generations: Louise Fishman, Gertrude Fisher-Fishman, and Razel Kapustin, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia PAPYRI: Guestbooks, Bookworks and Similar Departures by guests of Emily Harvey Foundation 2004–2012, Emily Harvey Foundation,Venice

2011 Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San

Francisco; traveled to The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Dance/Draw, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston; traveled to The Grey Art

Gallery, New York University, New York; The Tang Museum, Skidmore College,

New York ABSTRACTION, Albert Merola Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts

The Women in Our Life: A Fifteen Year Anniversary Exhibition, Cheim & Read, New York To the Venetians, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island READYKEULOUS/The Hurtful Healer, Invisible Exports, New York

2010

2009

Painting & Sculpture: To Benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Lehman Maupin Gallery, New York LES FEMMES, McClain Gallery, Houston Abstraction Revisited, Chelsea Art Museum, New York Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism, The Jewish Museum, New York Le Tableau: French Abstraction and its Affinities, curated by Joe Fyfe, Cheim &Read, New York

2008

MassArt at the Fine Arts Work Center: Faculty and Visiting Artists, Hudson D. Walker Gallery Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts Pretty Ugly, Maccarone Gallery, New York Significant Form, The Persistence of Abstraction, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow Environments and Empires, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts

2007

American Abstract, Maruani & Noirhomme Gallery, Knokke, Belgium The Fluid Fields: Abstraction and Reference, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, The Geffen Contemporary, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; traveled to National Women’s Museum, Washington, D.C.; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada

Before Again: Joan Mitchell, Louise Fishman, Harriet Korman, Melissa Meyer, Jill Moser, Denyse Thomasos, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. Les Femmes, McClain Gallery, Houston Abstractions by Gallery Artists, Cheim & Read, New York Propose: Works on Paper from the 1970s, Alexander Gray Associates, New York

2006

High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1965–75, Independent Curators International, New York; traveled to Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina; American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC; National Academy Museum, New York; Museo de Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Neue Galerie Graz, Graz, Austria; ZKM |Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany The New Landscape/The New Still Life: Soutine and Modern Art, Cheim & Read, New York The Name of This Show is Not Gay Art Now, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York

2005

Looking at Words: The Formal Presence of Text in Modern and Contemporary Works on Paper, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York Paint, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, Oregon Contemporary Women Artists: New York, University Art Gallery, Indiana State University, Indiana

2004 Summer Invitational, Nielsen Gallery, Boston

Twelve From Cheim & Read, Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta

Drawing Exhibition, Galerie S 65, Cologne, Germany 2003

The Invisible Thread : Buddhist Spirit in Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York Women’s Lines, G Fine Art, Washington, DC Grisaille, James Graham & Sons, New York

2002

Zenroxy, Von Lintel Gallery, New York Nocturne/Nocturnal, Skoto Gallery, New York Personal and Political: The Woman’s Art Movement, 1969–1975, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York Art Downtown: New York Painting and Sculpture, 48 Wall Street, New York 177th Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, Adolph & Clara Obrig 1st Prize for Painting Painting: A Passionate Response, Sixteen American Artists, The Painting Center, New York Nature Found and Made, Chambers Fine Art, New York

2001

Four Painters, Lindsey Brown, New York Watercolor: In The Abstract, curated by Pamela Auchincloss, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York; traveled to Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center Gallery SUNY at Fredonia; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Nina Freudenheim, Inc., Buffalo, New York; Ben Shahn Gallery, Williams Patterson University, Wayne, New Jersey; Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa Seven Female Visionaries Before Feminism, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, California Reopening Exhibition, The Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, New York Imaging Judaism / Mining History, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York

2000

175th Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York Painting Abstraction, New York Studio School, New York Snapshot, Baltimore Museum of Contemporary Art, Baltimore, Maryland The Perpetual Well: Contemporary Art from the Collection of The Jewish Museum, The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York

1999

Gestural Abstraction, Hunter College Art Galleries, New York Severed Ear: The Poetry of Abstraction, Creiger-Dane Gallery, Boston Walking, Danese, New York Abstraction: Realism, Susquehanna Art Museum, curated by Jonathan Van Dyke, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Drawing in the Present Tense, Parsons School of Design, New York

1998

Small Paintings, Cheim & Read, New York Undercurrents & Overtones: Contemporary Abstract Painting, California College of Arts & Crafts Institute, Oakland Paintings & Drawings, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago

1997 Retreat and Renewall: The Painters and Sculptors of the MacDowell Colony, The

Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire; traveled to the Equitable

Gallery, New York; Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas; Ft. Wayne Museum of Art, Ft. Wayne, Indiana Convergence, George Billis Gallery, New York Voices: The Power of Abstraction, Eighth Floor Gallery, New York Abstract Painting, curated by Jeffrey Wasserman, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, New York Basically Black & White, Neuberger Museum, SUNY Purchase, New York Affinities with the East, Robert Miller Gallery, New York After the Fall: Aspects of Abstract Painting Since 1970, Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York

1996 Summer Group Show, Robert Miller Gallery, New York

Transforming the Social Order, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia

Women’s Work, Greene Naftali Inc., New York 1995

25 Americans: Painting the 90s, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwuakee, Wisconsin Artist’s Choice: Elizabeth Murray, Museum of Modern Art, New York Carnegie International, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh New Faculty, Harvard University, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge

1994

Relatively Speaking: Mothers and Daughters in Art, Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, Virginia; traveled to Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York; Rahr West Museum, Manitowoc, Wisconsin Consecrations: The Spiritual in Art in the Time of AIDS, Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, Missouri Couples, Elga Wimmer, New York Small and Wet: Abstract Painting and Sculpture, Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston 46th Annual Academy Purchase Exhibition, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York Abstract Works on Paper, Robert Miller Gallery, New York

1993 Drawing the Line Against AIDS, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, under the

aegis of the 45th Venice Biennale. Reinstalled at the Guggenheim Museum, Soho

Abstract-Figurative, Robert Miller Gallery, New York

Art Discovery ’93, Cooperstown Art Association and Smithy-Pioneer Gallery, Cooperstown, New York The Inaugural Show, The Painting Center, New York Singularities, Blondies Contemporary Art, New York The Linear Image II, Marisa del Re Gallery, New York 30th Anniversary Exhibition of Drawings, Castelli Gallery, New York, to benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc.

1992 Paintings by Martha Diamond, Mary Heilmann, Harriet Korman, Louise Fishman and

Bernard Piffaretti, Robert Miller Gallery, New York

The Jewish Museum’s Masked Ball in Celebration of Purim, The Jewish Museum, New York 1991

Something Pithier and More Psychological, Simon Watson Gallery, New York Spring/Summer Exhibition, Part One: Painters, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York Twentieth-Century Collage, Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles; traveled to Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo, Polonco, Mexico; Musée d’art Moderne et d’art Contemporain, Nice, France Act-Up Benefit, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

1990 A Group Exhibition, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York

Group Exhibition of Gallery Artists, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York

From Earth to Archetype, LedisFlam Gallery, New York 1989

Group Exhibition, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York Towards Form, Greenberg Wilson Gallery, New York Works on Paper, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York Fragments of History, Albany Museum of Art, Albany, Georgia A Decade of American Drawing 1980–1989, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles Belief in Paint: Eleven Contemporary Artists, Usdan Gallery, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont

1988 Golem: Danger, Deliverance and Art, The Jewish Museum, New York

Selections from the Edward R. Downe, Jr. Collection, curated by Klaus Kertess, Davis-

McClain Gallery, Houston Louise Fishman, David Reed, Joan Mitchell, curated by Marjorie Welish Barbara Toll Gallery, New York

1987

The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York 40th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Jewish Themes, The Jewish Museum, New York, traveling exhibition

1986

Artists for Pride, Nexus Gallery, Philadelphia Louise Fishman, Hermine Ford and Arthur Cohen, Hofstra University, New York Jewish Themes–Contemporary American Artists II, The Jewish Museum, New York Heland Thorden Wetterling Galleries, Stockholm, Sweden Spirit Tracks–Big Abstract Drawings, Pratt Manhattan Center Gallery, New York and Pratt Institute Gallery, Brooklyn, New York Baskerville & Watson Gallery, New York

1985

Drawings 1975–1985, Barbara Toll Fine Arts, New York Baskerville & Watson Gallery, New York Painting as Landscape, curated by Klaus Kertess, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York; traveled to Baxter Art Gallery, Pasadena, California An Invitational, curated by Tiffany Bell, Condeso/Lawler, New York Paintings 1985, Pam Adler Gallery, New York Twelve Painters and Six Sculptors, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia

1984

Relief Prints Since 1980, Summit Art Center, Summit, New Jersey Second Nature: Abstract Drawings and Paintings, curated by John Lee and Tom Wolf, Proctor Art Center, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York Cable Gallery, New York New Prints Since 1980, Phillip Johnson Center, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania

1983

Six Painters, The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York Drawing In and Out, Baskerville & Watson, New York Painting from the Mind’s Eye, Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University, Greenvale, New York

1982

Washburn Gallery, New York Abstraction, Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase, New York Mixing Art and Politics, Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago Abstract Painting: Substance and Meaning–Painting by Woman Artists, New York Chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art, New York Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan Five New York Artists, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont Painterly Abstraction, Fort Wayne Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana

1981

Rush Rhees Fine Arts Gallery, University of Rochester, New York Painting Invitational, Oscarsson-Hood Gallery, New York CAPS Grantees from Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, New York CAPS Award Winners in Painting 1980–1981, Proctor Art Center, Bard College, Annandaleon-Hudson, New York and Munson Williams Proctor Museum, Utica, New York

1980 Work on Paper, Mary Boone Gallery, New York

Inaugural Exhibit, Oscarsson-Hood Gallery, New York 1979 Major New Works, Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York 1977

Critic’s Choice, Lowe Gallery, Syracuse University, Ithaca, New York; traveled to Munson Williams Proctor Museum, Utica, New York Fifth Anniversary Show, Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York Paintings That Reveal the Wall, curated by Tom Wolf, Bard College, Annandale-on- Hudson, New York Major New Works, Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York Nancy Hoffman in Oxford, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

Preparatory Notes—Thinking Drawings, Part II, 80 Washington Square East Galleries, New York University, New York

1976

1975

Paris International Art Fair, Grand Palais, Paris Artist ’76, A Celebration, Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas University of Rhode Island, Kingston John Doyle Gallery, Chicago New York Faculty Exhibition, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

1973 A Woman’s Group, Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York

Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 1972 Summer Show, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

Open A.I.R., A.I.R. Gallery, New York, 1963 National Watercolor and Drawing Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh The Denver Art Museum, Colorado The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia The Jewish Museum, New York The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York The Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia

AWARDS 1963 Tyler School of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. First Painting Prize, Student Exhibit

Tyler School of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Bertha Lowenburg Prize for the Senior

Woman to Excel in Art 1975 Change, Inc., New York 1975 National Endowment for the Arts, Painting 1979 Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting 1980 Fellow, MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire 1981 CAPS Fellowship in Painting 1983 National Endowment for the Arts, Painting 1986 New York Foundation for the Arts, Fellowship in Painting

Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, General Support Grant 1994 National Endowment for the Arts, Painting 2002 Adolph & Clara Obrig Prize for Painting, National Academy of Design, 177th

Annual Exhibition

Louise Fishman Cheim & Read 2015

Published on the occasion of the 2015 Cheim & Read exhibition.

Design John Cheim. Essay Alex Greenberger. Editor Ellen Robinson.

Photography Brian Buckley. Printer Trifolio. ISBN 978–0–9914681–9–5.

Louise Fishman

cover 9-4-15.indd 1

Cheim & Read

Cheim & Read

Louise Fishman 9/22/15 1:09 PM