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Lot Essay
"It is rare that so young an artist as Richard Tuttle should have found how to address us in his own voice, without an accent. His art belongs to no-one but himself, and like himself, it is of the twentieth century. These are already staggering achievements"--Introduction by G.B. Washburn to Tuttle's first solo show at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1965.
The simplicity of form that characterizes Richard Tuttle's Drift I is typical of the unique artistic language that the artist developed during this pivotal period of his career. Hugging the surface of the wall, the painted wood forms are part painting, part sculpture, freeing the work from the artistic constraints of either medium. This liberation allows Tuttle to develop his own artistic language, an intensely intimate and personal vocabulary in which the artist sensitizes our ability to perceive and visualize. The resulting work, which imparts an overwhelming sense of sublime simplicity and grace, encapsulates Tuttle's unique view of the world, "On the other hand, nature admires the simple-minded. Nature's admiration is exactly the opposite of human admiration. Some of the works of art that are necessary to me are those that praise my simplicity...Simplicity and complexity are virtually the same thing" (R. Tuttle in conversation, 1975).
1965, the year Tuttle conceived Drift I was a breakthrough year for the artist, as he was finally rewarded with his first solo exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery in New York. Parsons had long been a champion of Tuttle's subtle and refined lexicon and had persuaded him to do show in which he produced a series of plywood reliefs with sensitive and idiosyncratic contours and colors. These delicate and hollow shapes are as much about the physicality of the lines and voids as they are about physicality of the shapes that hug the surface of the wall. Hanging on the wall, these forms place themselves somewhere between sculpture, conversing with the viewer in a subtle language all of their own and separate from the conventional vocabulary of artistic expression. In his introduction to this first solo show, the renowned curator G.B Washburn identified this new artistic language as the defining characteristic of Tuttle's work, "Their shapes, and particularly their edges, follow the trembling sensibility, the delicacy of thought, the half-hidden feelings of their maker. They are constructions of the heart...These shapes are with inward meanings, each one the map, not of a place but of an experience. Perhaps we may say that they are Richard Tuttle's islands, the whole exhibition representing his own nature's archipelago. But it is by their contours that he is most eloquent, the subtlety of their modulations giving them the air of faintly breathing, making them seem to expand and contract like tender living things" (G.B. Washburn, 'Richard Tuttle: Constructed Paintings,' Richard Tuttle, Amsterdam, 1991, p. 86).
Other works from this important period of Tuttle's career are housed in the permanent collections of many of the finest museums in the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art. Tuttle's work was also championed by a new breed of collectors including the pioneering Herbert and Dorothy Vogel. They owned two pieces from this period of Tuttle's career, a green and a purple wall-piece, and many of Tuttle's early exhibited were populated by pieces from the extensive holdings the Vogels had of Tuttle's work. The Vogel's have paid tribute to Tuttle's unique aesthetic as one of the main influences on their developing aesthetic, "Richard made me open my eyes to the beauty of things by focusing on the beauty of very minimal things. He influenced me on how to look at art. I think I started to look at art differently because of him, and I learned how to look at art differently because of him, and I learned how to look from looking at his work. I think it changed my whole perspective of looking at art" (D. Vogel, 'An Interview with Herbert and Dorothy Vogel', Ibid., p. 66).
Richard Tuttle's reputation as one of the leading post minimalist artists rests on his persistently unconstrained art practice that uses improvisational working procedures and non-traditional materials. Yet unlike his minimalist predecessors who based their practice on reductive and impersonal creations, the multiplicity of concepts in Tuttle's work is made all the more successful because of his intensely personal reaction to the materials and how they work in conjunction with each other.
The simplicity of form that characterizes Richard Tuttle's Drift I is typical of the unique artistic language that the artist developed during this pivotal period of his career. Hugging the surface of the wall, the painted wood forms are part painting, part sculpture, freeing the work from the artistic constraints of either medium. This liberation allows Tuttle to develop his own artistic language, an intensely intimate and personal vocabulary in which the artist sensitizes our ability to perceive and visualize. The resulting work, which imparts an overwhelming sense of sublime simplicity and grace, encapsulates Tuttle's unique view of the world, "On the other hand, nature admires the simple-minded. Nature's admiration is exactly the opposite of human admiration. Some of the works of art that are necessary to me are those that praise my simplicity...Simplicity and complexity are virtually the same thing" (R. Tuttle in conversation, 1975).
1965, the year Tuttle conceived Drift I was a breakthrough year for the artist, as he was finally rewarded with his first solo exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery in New York. Parsons had long been a champion of Tuttle's subtle and refined lexicon and had persuaded him to do show in which he produced a series of plywood reliefs with sensitive and idiosyncratic contours and colors. These delicate and hollow shapes are as much about the physicality of the lines and voids as they are about physicality of the shapes that hug the surface of the wall. Hanging on the wall, these forms place themselves somewhere between sculpture, conversing with the viewer in a subtle language all of their own and separate from the conventional vocabulary of artistic expression. In his introduction to this first solo show, the renowned curator G.B Washburn identified this new artistic language as the defining characteristic of Tuttle's work, "Their shapes, and particularly their edges, follow the trembling sensibility, the delicacy of thought, the half-hidden feelings of their maker. They are constructions of the heart...These shapes are with inward meanings, each one the map, not of a place but of an experience. Perhaps we may say that they are Richard Tuttle's islands, the whole exhibition representing his own nature's archipelago. But it is by their contours that he is most eloquent, the subtlety of their modulations giving them the air of faintly breathing, making them seem to expand and contract like tender living things" (G.B. Washburn, 'Richard Tuttle: Constructed Paintings,' Richard Tuttle, Amsterdam, 1991, p. 86).
Other works from this important period of Tuttle's career are housed in the permanent collections of many of the finest museums in the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art. Tuttle's work was also championed by a new breed of collectors including the pioneering Herbert and Dorothy Vogel. They owned two pieces from this period of Tuttle's career, a green and a purple wall-piece, and many of Tuttle's early exhibited were populated by pieces from the extensive holdings the Vogels had of Tuttle's work. The Vogel's have paid tribute to Tuttle's unique aesthetic as one of the main influences on their developing aesthetic, "Richard made me open my eyes to the beauty of things by focusing on the beauty of very minimal things. He influenced me on how to look at art. I think I started to look at art differently because of him, and I learned how to look at art differently because of him, and I learned how to look from looking at his work. I think it changed my whole perspective of looking at art" (D. Vogel, 'An Interview with Herbert and Dorothy Vogel', Ibid., p. 66).
Richard Tuttle's reputation as one of the leading post minimalist artists rests on his persistently unconstrained art practice that uses improvisational working procedures and non-traditional materials. Yet unlike his minimalist predecessors who based their practice on reductive and impersonal creations, the multiplicity of concepts in Tuttle's work is made all the more successful because of his intensely personal reaction to the materials and how they work in conjunction with each other.