Red Grooms at Marlborough Gallery, New York - New Works in Wood

Red Grooms, New Works in Wood 
Marlborough Gallery, New York
May 6 – June 5, 2004

Since 1976 when Red Grooms had his first exhibition at Marlborough of Ruckus Manhattan he has staked his claim as one of America’s most original, inventive, and popular artists. His work combines the sophistication of high art with the naiveté of folk art and the caricature of the cartoonist. The current exhibition includes one large oil on canvas and approximately twenty-five of the artist’s hallmark dimensional constructions which meld painting and sculpture. The painting entitled Manet at the Met (78 1/4 x 120 1/2”) is bound to be one of the show’s highlights. It portrays a large room at The Metropolitan Museum where Red Grooms has painted the various Manet works on view. The gallery is “ruckused” with a veritable comédie humaine of art goers while Red Grooms shows off his anecdotal ability to make characters believable. 

The medium for all the dimensional works in this show is acrylic on wood and among the several stand out pieces the largest is based on a gangster funeral. Measuring approximately seven by ten feet the scene of Death in the Family is set in the 1930s and we see FBI agents in the process of surveillance, peering through Venetian blinds as the gangsters load the coffin into a hearse. Another eye-catching work entitled Joseph’s Bridge has for its genesis the famous painting by Joseph Stella of the Brooklyn Bridge set against the New York skyline. In Red Grooms’ adaptation we see the bridge from the same vantage point as in Joseph Stella’s painting but the bridge is now projected into space and the footbridge is peopled by joggers, bicyclists and tourists while their general bustle is echoed by the repeating forms of the suspension cables and in the movement of car traffic on the ramps below and by the motoring of boats in the East River. The bright colors of the painting enhance the scene’s boisterous activity and overall radiant joyfulness.

It could be said that Red Grooms’ work is theatrical in nature, that it conveys through his special, resonant colors the buoyant feeling of a circus atmosphere, and that it is entertaining. “He is living proof that art can be fun,” and as another critic has pointed out, “the vibrant hues and dynamic motion of his work capture the energy of the circus in a way which immediately calls to mind the renderings of the very same subject in late 19th century art of Seurat and Signac.” Grooms himself once stated, “As a kid I was mad about the theater, absolutely mad about it. Circuses, carnivals, movies, it didn’t matter what they were. All of them are theater to me.” While the spirit of the theater indeed informs much of his work, one must remember, however, as Clare Henry rightly pointed out in Sculpture Magazine that Red Grooms’ large scale figurative tableaux are more than mere entertainment: “A superb draftsman with a keen, unforgiving eye yet easy going, light touch, he translates a lifetime’s acute observation (laced with strong satire) into bright Pop Americana with universal appeal. Caricature is often vicious and Grooms can offer a no-holds-barred message with bite. But he stops short of the malicious in favor of the benign commentary on human frailties with which we can all identify. Such humanity and honesty imbues his stereotypes with conviction.”

RED GROOMS was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1937. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the New School for Social Research in New York City and at the Hans Hoffman School of Fine Arts in Provincetown, MA. Along with developing the painted relief as both a painting and sculpture, Grooms invented the three dimensional form called sculpto-pictorama that allows the viewer to walk through and interact with an environment created by the artist’s vision. He has had three retrospective shows: in 1985 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in 1987 at the Whitney Museum, and in 2001 at the National Academy of Design of his graphic work. This last exhibition traveled to eight other venues through 2004. He has also been honored with several important survey exhibitions, of which two recent ones were at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ in 2000 and at the Katonah Museum, NY in 2003. The Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville, TN, will present an exhibition of Red Grooms’ work from May 7 - October 10, 2004.

He has received numerous awards and commissions throughout his career. His most recent award is the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the National Academy of Design in 2003. His most recent major commissions are a large (132 x 188 x 88”) painted aluminum and plastic sculpture entitled Piragüas de Frambuesa (Raspberry Shaved Ice Cone) for Coamo, Puerto Rico to be completed in 2004; a monumental cyclerama and accompanying canvases for Shelly’s Restaurant, in New York in 2000; the permanent outdoor installation entitled Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel in Nashville in 1998; and a permanent outdoor sculpture commissioned by the City of Nagoya, Japan in 1996. Grooms’ additional artistic activities include happenings, filmmaking and theater designs. The artist lives and works in New York City.

Red Grooms’ work can be found in thirty-nine museums throughout the world. Among them are the following: American Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA; The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE; Des Moines Art Center, IA; The Denver Art Museum, CO; Fort Worth Art Museum, TX; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Nagoya City Art Museum, Japan; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

In June 2004 Rizzoli will publish a new monograph on Red Grooms entitled Red Grooms with essays by Arthur Danto and Marco Livingstone and an interview with the artist by Timothy Hyman.

In collaboration with Marlborough’s exhibition will be a show of the artist’s watercolors and prints at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery. Entitled The Private World of Red Grooms the exhibition will run from April 29 to May 28, 2004.

MARLBOROUGH GALLERY 
www.marlboroughgallery.com