Estate of Andrew Forge [1923 - 2002]
On Thursday, June 4, Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open an exhibition of the work of Andrew Forge. The exhibit will include approximately 10 paintings and 10 works on paper dating from 1990 to the time of his death in 2002. The fully illustrated catalogue which accompanies this exhibition includes statements by Dore Ashton, William Bailey, John Elderfield, and Catherine Lampert, among others, attesting to the respect and vast following Forge had as an artist, a writer and a person.
Forge moved from London to the States in the early 1970’s. At that time, he had the opportunity to meet the group of artists surrounding John Cage, particularly Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Cage, himself. He wrote later that it was Rauschenberg who seemed to have a “very vivid correspondence with my sense of the world, with my sense of reality.” He never felt his painting resembled Rauschenberg’s but he was interested in how Rauschenberg juxtaposed radically different pieces on his canvas. This serendipitous juxtaposition excited Forge as it broke out of the mode of language. One dot on a white canvas and then another dot each introduced a new dynamic. The dots were as concrete to Forge as collaged images or hanging tires were to Rauschenberg. By the mid1970’s Forge’s mature style had crystalized.
Andrew Forge was born in Kent, England in 1923 and spent much of his early career exhibiting and teaching in London. He moved to the United States in the early 1970’s, teaching at Cooper Union and exhibiting regularly in New York. He was a professor at the Yale University School of Art from 1975 – 94, where he served as Dean from 1975 – 83. From 1994 – 2000 he was Senior Critic, University of Pennsylvania Department of Art, Philadelphia, PA and from 1999 – 2000 Forge was artist-in-residence, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH. His work can be seen in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Yale University, New Haven, CT; The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT; The Tate Gallery, London; and the Arts Council of Great Britain, among others. Awards include: John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1980), The American Academy of Arts and Institute of Letters, Painting Prize (1990), Distinguished Teaching of Art Award, College Art Association (1995). In addition to his primary career as a painter, Forge was also a celebrated writer, best known for his writings on Degas, Monet, Manet, Giacometti and Rauschenberg.
The exhibition, which is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, will remain on view through August 14, 2015.
Click below for full press release.
Andrew Forge Well, it’s a long story… As you know, since I started working with dots I’ve been very interested in the way in which the dot itself seems to invite different doings, in a sense. You want to look at them close, you want to see what the dots are doing when you got your nose stuck in them, then you want to stand back and see what they do at a distance… .
Painter David Carbone explores the affinities between painter and composer provoked by visiting Forge’s show at Betty Cuningham this summer (June 4 to August 14, 2015) and hearing Feldman’s Neither at New York City Opera several years earlier.
Andrew Forge was an influential painter and teacher for years at Yale among other places. His influence was formative for me and I know for many others as well. An ideal tribute to his memory would be a sprawling museum show of his work and the work of artists he influenced, since that's not in my power; I reached out to artists who have generously shared their memories and work below. If you're in New York this December, you can see a couple of Andrew's paintings as they demand to be seen, in the flesh, at The Betty Cuningham Gallery The show is called, "It's Magic!" a group exhibition of works by Andrew Forge, William Bailey, Rackstraw Downes, Jake Berthot, Forrest Bess, Alfonso Fratteggiani Bianchi, John Elderfield, Alison Wilding, and Christopher Wilmarth, December 10 - January 10, 2015 with an opening reception on Saturday, December 13th from 4 -7 pm.
Walking into my favorite gallery can be like stepping into grandma’s kitchen when the oven’s on. Something’s cooking, I don’t know what it is, but chances are I’m going to like it. In New York, I depend on a dozen or so galleries for such comfort food. These are the galleries that know what I want before I want it.
The geographies vary—from Chelsea, to SoHo, to the Upper East Side—but the consistency of vision and the strength of personality keep these galleries on the tip of my tongue and in the front of my mind. From the rank novice to the seasoned expert, the secret of the gallery scene is to find places you like and to stick with them. What follows are three of my personal favorites.
Coming as I do from London, where the sidewalks are called “pavements” and are made of neatly joined, level flagstones, the roughly poured, broken, unpatterned concrete that one walks on in New York is always affecting. My sense of the whole city is colored by that thin, random seeming covering, a mere temporary shell thrown over the sand and mud which the ancient rocks that jut out of the grass in Central Park seem savagely to ignore. These fissured, pitted sidewalks are treacherous. I keep my eyes down. At the same time I am surrounded by buildings and an ever‐changing panorama of reflections. Clouds and sunlight are inverted below the skyline. Roads of light open between the buildings. I am in a state of constant tension between up and down. The juxtaposition throws up a wholly unfamiliar view of man’s works. And an unfamiliar view of myself. The city seems open, provisional, the luxurious and ramshackle upshot of certain freedoms which, in my European experience, are nothing but states of mind, or longing, and have no material presence – unless perhaps in childhood memories of treehouses, dammed streams, and improvised blockhouses under the kitchen table.
