The Art Show Preview Catalogue

THE ART SHOW

SUSAN SHEEHAN GALLERY 2022

BOOTH B16

THE OPENING GALA OF THE ART SHOW AND ALL TICKET SALES BENEFIT HENRY STREET SETTLEMENT

NOVEMBER 3RD - 6TH, 2022 BENEFIT PREVIEW BY INVITATION NOVEMBER 2ND

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

https://theartshow.org/information/henry-street-settlement TO PURCHASE TICKETS:

LOCATION: PARK AVENUE ARMORY PARK AVENUE AT 67TH STREET NEW YORK

https://theartshow.artsvp.co/2022 FOR SHOW INFORMATION: https://theartshow.org/information

SUSAN SHEEHAN GALLERY On the cover: Jasper Johns Corpse and Mirror, 1976

136 East 16th Street New York, NY 10003 212-489-3331

info@susansheehangallery.com www.susansheehangallery.com

David Hockney Red Celia, 1984 Lithograph Sheet size: 30 x 21 inches Printer and Publisher: Tyler Graphics, Ltd., Bedford, New York Edition: 82, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: MCAT 267 Signed, numbered, and dated

David Hockney Celia with Green Hat, 1984 Lithograph Sheet size: 29 1/2 x 22 inches Printer and Publisher: Tyler Graphics, Ltd., Bedford, New York Edition: 98, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: MCAT 268 Signed, numbered, and dated

Celia Birtwell posing for David Hockney, 1984

David Hockney’s (b.1937) works are often characterized by an unassuming realism that partially stems from his interest in photography. Over the course of his long career he has mastered a variety of mediums, but his devotion to printmaking has been unwavering. Hockney often favored the printmaking technique of lithography because it could be used like drawing and was an extension of his crayon, charcoal, and brush works on paper. At the time this print was made, Hockney began using a new lithographic technique as he wanted to make the portraits more spontaneous and fluid by drawing boldly with a brush in diluted lithographic ink tusche.

In the works Red Celia and Celia with a Green Hat from the “Moving Focus” series, Hockney captures his friend and beloved muse Celia Birtwell. She is caught in elegant poses inspired by the prints of Matisse, whose command of form and line appealed to the artist. In lithographic crayon, he subtly outlines her physical features.

Celia was a London textile designer and an icon of the Swinging Sixties. Hockney became good friends with her in the late 1960s when she married the prominent fashion designer Ossie Clark, an old friend of Hockney’s. Even though the unconventional marriage did not last, Celia remained one of Hockney’s favorite models and an anomaly in Hockney’s male-dominated imagery. As Hockney explained,“Celia has a beautiful face, a very rare face with lots of things in it which appeal to me.

It shows aspects of her, like her intuitive knowledge and her kindness, which I think is the greatest virtue. To me she’s such a special person.” Hockney has a keen observation of the way in which personality is conveyed through the body as much as through facial expression, and perhaps it is his portrayals of Celia’s flair and grace that attracts the greatest appreciation.

David Hockney Four Part Splinge, 1993 Lithograph and screenprint Sheet size: 49 x 66 inches, on 4 sheets Printer and Publisher: Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles Edition: 48, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: MCAT 334 Signed, numbered, titled, and dated

Edward Hopper American Landscape, 1920 Etching Sheet size: 13 x 17 1/2 inches Printer: The Artist Edition: Approximately 50, from an intended edition of 100 Catalogue Raisonné: Levin 69 Signed Provenance: DeMoines Art Center, Iowa Henry G. Harmon, President of Drake University Private Collection, Iowa

Edward Hopper Night Shadows, 1921 Etching Sheet size: 12 x 14 1/2 inches Printer: The Artist Edition: Approximately 75 impressions, from an intended edition of 100 Catalogue Raisonné: Levin 82 Signed and inscribed “Night Shadows $30,” by the artist A very rare impression before the plate was steel-faced Provenance: DeMoines Art Center, Iowa Private Collection, Iowa

Despite his reputation as a realist painter, Edward Hopper (1882–1967) initially struggled to find a market for his canvases, achieving his first success as an artist in New York by creating prints. Upon learning etching in 1915, Hopper quickly realized that the technique suited his style well, enabling him to achieve clear lines and stark contrasts between areas of light and shadow. He often heightened this effect by using bright white papers and specially ordered inks.

Hopper’s prints from the generative decade that followed show his early exploration of the motifs he would later become famous for rendering in paint, always portraying everyday American life with quiet yet intense drama. American Landscape features one of Hopper’s quintessential subjects: industrial railroad tracks cutting through an otherwise peaceful pastoral landscape. The juxtaposition would be forlorn were it not for Hopper’s depiction of several sauntering cows viewed from behind, their haunches rendering the image tongue-in-cheek. Looking at this print, one can almost feel a country breeze passing, carrying with it the sound of a far-off train—a quiet yet portentous blend of past and present, familiar and unknown. Both the content and atmosphere of American Landscape foreshadows some of Hopper’s most famous paintings, including House by a Railroad (1925).

A year later, Hopper created Night Shadows, his best-known etching and one of his most iconic works in any medium. The print depicts a lone man on a deserted city street as seen from a birdseye view. Although its content is not overtly sinister, the scene feels ominous thanks to Hopper’s extreme foreshortening coupled with his expert use of cross-hatching and deeply bitten lines to create dark, mysterious shadows. As with most of Hopper’s most renowned works, the viewer of Night Shadows occupies the role of voyeur, observing the lone stranger from somewhere out of his view. Dwarfed by and seemingly vulnerable to his surroundings—which were inspired by an actual location in New York, also seen in his painting New York Corner (1913)—the figure in Night Shadows captivates us as we wonder where he has come from and where he is headed.

Night Shadows is not only an iconic image, but the exhibited impression is an exceedingly rare one printed by the artist before the metal printing plate was reinforced with steel-facing when Peter Platt printed a larger edition. Obsessed with quality, Hopper printed most of his etchings himself in his West Village studio in very small quantities. The later and larger edition of this image was printed in an edition of less than 500 and offered to readers of The New Republic magazine as an incentive to subscribe. Hopper produced approximately 70 etchings between 1915 and 1928 before returning exclusively to painting. However, he attributed his printmaking practice to the evolution and ultimate success of his painting practice, stating later in life: “After I took up my etching, my painting seemed to crystallize.”

Edward Hopper with his etching press in his New York studio, 1967

Wayne Thiebaud Candy Apples, 1987 Woodcut Sheet size: 23 3/8 x 24 1/4 inches Printer: Tadashi Toda at Shi-un-do Print Shop, Kyoto, Japan Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco Edition: 200, plus proofs Signed, dated, and numbered

“I remember when I was a boy how great it was to get ahold of my mothers lipstick to draw with, lipstick is so soft, we don’t have any pencils that are equally sensitive.”

-Wayne Thiebaud

Wayne Thiebaud Lipsticks - Black, 1988 Drypoint Sheet size: 14 x 12 inches Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco Edition: 15, plus proofs Signed, dated, and numbered

Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021) is best known for his vibrant paintings and prints of cityscapes and familiar objects said to represent his vision of everyday American life. Rather than offering a satirical look at popular American culture like many of his Pop art contemporaries, Thiebaud’s still lifes depict confections and household objects with an earnest frankness.

Thiebaud created his first prints in the 1950s. He immediately gravitated to the printing medium as a way to experiment with subjects he had already rendered colorfully in paint. Thiebaud once remarked that, “Since printmaking is a sequential process, you’re of necessity slowed down to really intersperse with some sort of critical interrogations possible.” Thiebaud had been drawing and painting lipstick since he first worked as a commercial illustrator in the late 1940s, where he often created makeup ads.

The orderly arrangement of tubes in Lipsticks - Black alludes to Thiebaud’s paintings and prints of rows of confections. The stylized still life emblematizes his ethos of “[making] some drama, even though you’re working with very ordinary subject matter.” The dramatic shadows in Lipsticks - Black conjure images of brightly lit department store displays. They also reveal Thiebaud’s sensitivity to light, a common feature of his prints of still lifes.

Thiebaud has created many prints and paintings of lipsticks at various scales, but always with specific attention paid to the shiny tube exteriors. The size and material of the tube has been said to evoke bullet casings, giving these otherwise familiar, feminine objects a threatening quality. Regardless of this sinister subtext, the sharp forms that Thiebaud achieves in Lipsticks - Black exemplify his embrace of “the surprises where you learn from printmaking.”

Professor Paul Beckman with Wayne Thiebaud in his Sacramento, California studio, 1962-63

Wayne Thiebaud Large Sucker, 1970 Lithograph Sheet size: 24 x 22 inches Printer: Chiron Press, New York Publisher: Parasol Press Ltd., New York Edition size: 50, plus proofs Signed, numbered, and dated

Helen Frankenthaler Tales of Genji VI, 1998 Woodcut Sheet size: 47 x 42 inches Printer and Publisher: Tyler Graphics Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York Edition: 35, plus proofs Signed and numbered

Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) became active in the New York School of the 1950s, initially influenced by artists like Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. She gained fame with her invention of the color-stain technique—applying thin washes of paint to unprimed canvas—in her iconic Mountains and Sea (1952), a motivating work for Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and other Color Field painters who emerged in the 1960s.

Her own canvases, however, often evoked elements of landscape or figuration in the shaping of their forms. “My pictures are full of climates, abstract climates,” she once said. “They’re not nature per se, but a feeling.” As poet and critic Frank O’Hara wrote in 1960, “she is willing to risk everything on inspiration.” In addition to painting, Frankenthaler also made ceramics, welded steel sculptures, and set designs, but the related medium that most attracted her, and in which her achievement came the closest to painting, was printmaking—especially the creation of woodcuts, hers counting among the greatest of contemporary works in that medium.

Master Printer Kenneth Tyler recalled that with the Tales of Genji, a series of six woodcut prints that Frankenthaler began in 1995, “It was apparent from the beginning that what was needed was a new approach and technique for making what Helen strove for: a woodcut with painterly resonance.”

Tyler suggested to Frankenthaler that she communicate what she wanted to the workshop printers by painting onto six pieces of wood.

Yasuyuki Shibata, a Japanese carver trained in the traditional technique of ukiyo-e, was employed to carve woodblocks after the six paintings that Frankenthaler produced. Handmade paper was also skillfully created to resemble the wood grain look and texture of the original paintings. In order to transpose the lush, transparent washes of color that Frankenthaler had painted into print, the technicians at Tyler Graphics had to work fast, with wet sheets of paper and inks that were forced to bleed and blend into one another. It was only through trial and error that the workshop gradually overcame these technical challenges.

Helen Frankenthaler with proofs for the Tales of Genji series at Tyler Graphics, 1995

Despite a leap into the creative unknown, the six resulting images are extraordinary prints. The Tales of Genji, which took the artist and the workshop three years to complete, is perhaps the greatest achievement in experimental print collaboration between Frankenthaler and Tyler.

Helen Frankenthaler Savage Breeze, 1974 Woodcut Sheet size: 31 1/2 x 27 inches Printer and Publisher: ULAE, West Islip, New York Edition: 31, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Abrams 47 Signed, dated, and numbered

“I want to draw my own images, mix my own colors, approve of registration marks, select paper—all the considerations and reconsiderations. Assuming that those who work in the workshop are all artists at what they do, I can then entrust the actual duplicating process to other hands that possess—hopefully— their kind of magic. Sharing and participating to the end.”

-Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler in her studio, 1977

Jasper Johns Corpse and Mirror, 1976 Screenprint Sheet size: 42 7/8 x 52 7/8 inches Printer and Publsiher: Jasper Johns and Simca Print Artist, Inc., New York Edition: 65, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: ULAE 169 Signed, numbered, and dated

Jasper Johns Decoy II, 1973 Lithograph Sheet size: 41 x 29 inches Printer and Publisher: ULAE, West Islip, New York Edition: 31, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: ULAE 125 Signed, dated, and numbered

Ellsworth Kelly Colored Paper Image IX (Four Grays with Black I), 1976 Colored and pressed paper pulp Sheet size: 46 1/2 x 32 1/2 inches Printer: Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Tyler, fabricated at HMP Paper Mill, Woodstock, Connecticut Publisher: Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford New York Edition: 18, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Axsom 149 Signed and numbered

Ellsworth Kelly 18 Colors (Cincinnati), 1979-82 Lithograph Sheet size: 16 x 90 1/2 inches Printer and Publisher: Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles Edition: 57, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Axsom 193 Signed and numbered

Joan Mitchell Bedford II, 1981 Lithograph Sheet size: 42 1/2 x 32 1/2 inches Printer and Publisher: Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford, New York Edition: 70, plus proofs Signed and numbered

Joan Mitchell Sunflower V, 1972 Etching with aquatint Sheet size: 35 7/8 x 24 7/8 inches Printer: Arte Adrien Maeght, Paris Publisher: Maeght Editeur, Paris Edition: 75, plus proofs Signed and numbered

Ed Ruscha Indecision, 1982 Etching Sheet size: 24 1/8 x 22 1/2 inches Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco Edition: 25, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Engberg 128 Signed, dated, and inscribed

Ed Ruscha at Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles 1991

Bruce Nauman Shit and Die, 1985 Drypoint Sheet size: 15 3/4 x 22 1/2 inches Printer and Publisher: Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles Edition size: 38, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Engberg 128 Signed, dated, and numbered

Roy Lichtenstein Tel Aviv Museum Print, 1989 Lithograph Sheet size: 25 5/8 x 51 1/2 inches Printer and Publisher: Tyler Graphics Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York Edition: 60, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Corlett 238 Signed, numbered, and dated

Roy Lichtenstein Landscape with Poet, 1996 Lithograph with screenprint Sheet size: 90 1/4 x 36 inches Printer and Publisher: Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles Edition size: 60, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Corlett 238 Signed, dated, and numbered

Roy Lichtenstein Two Paintings, 1984 Woodcut, lithograph, screenprint, and collage Sheet size: 45 1/2 x 39 inches Printer and Publisher: Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles Edition: 60, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Corlett 205 Signed, dated, and numbered

Richard Diebenkorn Large Bright Blue, 1980 Aquatint and etching Sheet size: 39 5/8 x 26 1/8 inches Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco Edition: 35, plus proofs Signed, dated, and numbered

Richard Diebenkorn at Crown Point Press, 1980

Richard Diebenkorn (1922 –1993) created some 200 prints over the course of his career, beginning in the 1940s. Despite being well-known for his use of color as a painter, it was not until 1980 that Diebenkorn began regularly incorporating color into his prints. Large Bright Blue is one of the eight works he produced that year in his first series of color etchings at Crown Point Press in San Francisco. Diebenkorn began collaborating with Crown Point Press founder Kathan Brown in the 1960s and typically worked in the intaglio medium. The eight prints created in March and April of 1980 mark a turning point in Diebenkorn’s career and he continued to make color intaglio prints at Crown Point until his death in 1993.

At first glance, Large Bright Blue looks as though it could be part of the artist’s famed Ocean Park painting series, which he started in 1966. Large Bright Blue undeniably grapples with the same subject: the artist’s surroundings in coastal California and specifically the Pacific Ocean. According to Brown, Diebenkorn used printmaking as “a way of drawing” to test ideas he was exploring in his paintings.

Owing to that sense of exploration, many of Diebenkorn’s prints, especially from 1980, relate directly to one another. For example, Large Bright Blue features an irregular rectangular form that appears in other prints from this important period, such as Construct (Grid) and Small Red. Diebenkorn often reused his plates, layering them or interchanging colors to produce new images. As a result of this approach, Large Bright Blue exemplifies Diebenkorn’s creative process as he discovered what would become a favored method of printmaking.

Richard Diebenkorn Blue with Red, 1987 Woodcut Sheet size: 37 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches Printer: Tadashi Toda at Shi-un-do Print Shop, Kyoto, Japan Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco Edition: 200, plus proofs Initialed, dated, and numbered

Donald Judd Untitled, 1961-79 Woodcut Sheet size: 21 x 29 1/4 inches Printer: Roy C. Judd Publisher: Edition der Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich Edition: 25, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Schellmann 31 Signed, dated, and numbered

SUSAN SHEEHAN GALLERY 136 East 16th Street New York, NY 10003 Tel: +1-212 489-3331 info@susansheehangallery.com www.susansheehangallery.com