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Major paintings by Rackstraw Downes & Stanley Lewis
April 29 – July 28, 2023
RACKSTRAW DOWNES, born in England in 1939, received his BA from University of Cambridge in 1961 and his BFA and MFA from Yale University in 1963 and 1964 respectively. He remained in the United States, becoming a citizen in 1980. He is the recipient of the Guggenheim (1998) and MacArthur (2009) Fellowships, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1999). A retrospective, Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008, was organized by the Parrish Art Museum in 2010. It traveled to the Portland Museum of Art, ME, and the Weatherspoon Museum in Greensboro, NC. His work is in the collections of several museums including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art.
Notably, he delivered the Ninth Annual Raymond Lecture for the Archives of American Art in 2009; in 2011, he participated in a Wyeth Foundation for American Art Conference at the National Gallery of Art, entitled Landscape in American Art, 1940-2000 where he delivered the address “From There to Here;’ in 2012 he was featured on PBS’s critically acclaimed Art 21 series, and in 2015, he delivered the inaugural Betty Jean & Wayne Thiebaud Endowed Lecture at the University of California, Davis.
His essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Art in America, ARTnews, and Art Journal. In 2014, Edgewise Press published a collection of his writings in Rackstraw Downes: Nature and Art Are Physical: Writings on Art, 1967-2008. A monograph, with essays by Robert Storr, Sanford Schwartz and Rackstraw Downes, was published by Princeton University Press in 2005. Other books include Under the Gowanus and Razor-Wire Journal (Turning the Head Press, 2000); In Relation to the Whole: Three Essays from Three Decades – 1973, 1981, 1996 (Edgewise Press 2004) and the volume of writings he edited in 1979, Fairfield Porter: Art in Its Own Terms, (Reprinted by the MFA, Boston, 2008). He is represented by Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York.
For full biography click below.
In a bygone age of college football, Doc Blanchard “Mr. Inside,” and Glenn Davis “Mr. Outside” made headlines for the West Point Military Academy team winning several championships with their backfield game, running the ball on the inside and carrying it on the outside. They’ve now been replaced by a couple of landscape painters: Stanley Lewis on the inside and Rackstraw Downes on the outside. Both are plein-air artists; together, they take the landscape tradition in a new direction.
Whatever you think realism means, Rackstraw Downes is certainly some kind of realist— and, moreover, one whoseelective subject matter is landscape. That in itself suggests a quixotic temperament in an artist born in 1939 whose immediatecontemporaries include any number of abstract, Conceptual, and performance artists but few realists—at least of his stature.
One thing that comes across in the drawings of Rackstraw Downes is the austere, almost monastic life he has lived in order to make art.One thing that comes across in the drawings of Rackstraw Downes is the austere, almost monastic life he has lived in order to make art.
There are two Rackstraw Downes in this remarkable show of 33 drawings and one oil on canvas. The range is huge, from 1975 until 2020, but with the bulk of the drawings made in 2020. Not exactly a retrospective, but enough of one for us to see two discrete phases in his career: his mature style and his late style.
Rackstraw Downes: Paintings & Drawings
By Alfred Mac Adam
Rackstraw Downes’s mesmerizing urban landscapes of New York have been acquired and displayed for years by the city’s most influential museums. Yet the painter is decidedly in no rush to meet connoisseurs’ demands. Mr. Downes is celebrated, in fact, for never being in a rush. He takes an entire summer to complete a single oil painting of a street scene, working meticulously from first to final stroke. He paints seven days a week, weather permitting, to get at the plein-air truth of the city’s grit and glory.
Rackstraw Downes work is featured on the cover.
The University of California, Davis, is honoring Betty Jean and Wayne Thiebaud by naming a new lecture series for them. The first lecture will be delivered by artist Rackstraw Downes, a MacArthur Foundation fellow, in May.
Rackstraw Downes Nature and Art are Physical: A Reading At the New York Studio School April 8, 2014 The artist will read from his newly published book Nature and Art are Physical: Writings on Art,1967-2008 (Edgewise Press, 2014). Recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, 2009, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 1998. Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1999. Represented in major collections throughout the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Represented by Betty Cuningham Gallery, Downes lives and works in New York City and Presidio, TX. Lectures begin at 6:30, lectures are free and open to the public. Seating may be limited. 8 W 8th street, NYC
