March 8 – April 7, 1990
Artists Space
Ed Clark, Carol Haerer, Ted Kurahara
With Ed Clark, Carol Haerer, Ted Kurahara, curator Cornelia Butler examined three artists one generation removed from the New York School painters who continued to work through abstraction. The exhibition was the third in an annual series sponsored by the Mark Rothko foundation, aimed at giving recognition to older, more established artists who remained underrepresented in New York. To many contemporary viewers, as painters seeking to advance, rather than dismantle, abstract painting, these three artists existed outside of the mainstream. In New York in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the period during which these artists embarked on their careers, abstract painting held little cachet. Without naming any particular examples, in the catalogue Butler voices her criticism of contemporary painting practices whose relevance is staked largely in a critical relationship to the New York School: "Abstraction that draws its life and its conceptual underpinnings entirely from its own intellectual and formal history becomes inextricably linked to its situation within the market. Outside of its value as a critical object which can be digested quickly and easily, it has very little life." In contrast, the paintings of Clark, Haerer, and Kurahara are built up through slow, deliberate, and personal decision-making processes and investigate painterly concerns like figure/ground relationships, lines between figuration and abstraction, and surface.
Artists Space programs are made possible by: the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, New York State Council on the Arts, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; AT&T Foundation, Inc., The David Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion, The Bohen Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc., Horace w. Goldsmith Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, Jerome Foundation, The J.M. Kaplan Fund, The Dorothea L. Leonhardt Foundation, Inc., The Joe and Emily Lowe Foundation, Inc., The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, The Menemsha Fund, Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Betty Parsons Foundation, The Reed Foundation, Inc., The Rockefeller Foundation, The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc., and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.; American Express Company, The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., Equitable Real Estate Group, Inc., General Atlantic Corporation, R.H. Macy and Company, Inc., Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York, Philip Morris Companies Inc., and U.S. Trust Company of New York; as well as Artwatch, Galleries in Support of Artists Space, Members and numerous Friends.
Additional funding for Artists Space activities has been provided by: Art Dealers Association of America, Inc., Louis A. Bradbury Fund, The Penny McCall Foundation, Motherwell Foundation, Inc., The Pace Gallery, and Payson Enterprises, Inc., among others.
Artists Space is a member of the National Association of Artists Organizations (NAAO) and the National Alliance of Media Arts Centers (NAMAC).