James Little (painter)

Last updated
James Little
Born1952 (age 72–73)
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Education Memphis Academy of Art (BFA 1974),
Syracuse University (MFA 1976)
Occupation(s)Painter, curator
Known forGeometric abstraction

James Little (born 1952) [1] is an American painter and curator. He is known for his works of geometric abstraction that are often imbued with exuberant color. [2] He has been based in New York City.

Contents

Early life and education

Little was born in 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee, [1] and grew up in the segregated American South. [2] [3] He is from an African-American family. [4]

He studied at the Memphis Academy of Art (now known as Memphis College of Art), while a student his work was praised and selected in 1973 for an exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center by Gerald Nordland. [5] He received his BFA degree from Memphis Academy of Art in 1974. [1] In 1976, Little obtained his MFA degree from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. [6] [7]

Career

Little cites Mitchell along with Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Alma Thomas, and George L. K. Morris as among the artists whose work he most admires. He has said of his own modus operandi: "Abstraction provided me with self-determination and free will. It was liberating. I don't find freedom in any other form. People like to have an answer before they have the experience. Abstraction doesn't offer you that." [3] [8] Critic Karen Wilkin has called Little's work (as possessing of a) "ravishing physicality" and . . . "orchestrations of geometry and chroma to delight our eyes and stir our emotions and intellect...". [9] Although Little has oft been labeled a hard-edge influenced painter, [10] he himself has said otherwise. [11]

In 1976, his work was the subject of the solo exhibition Paintings by James Little curated by Ronald Kutcha at the Everson Museum in Syracuse. In 1980, Little's work was included in the exhibition "Afro-American Abstraction", curated by April Kingsley, at MoMA PS1. [12] [13] [14]

In 2002, Little's large commission for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was unveiled. Riders at Jamaica Station now travel through his 85-foot-long environment made of 33 multicolored laminated glass panels in a prismatic design, each measuring at 17-feet tall by 5-feet wide. [4] [15]

In 2020, some of Little's large-scale black-tone paintings were shown in a two-artist exhibition with the work of Louise Nevelson, who was represented exclusively by the black colored sculptures, for which she is most known. The exhibition titled Louise Nevelson + James Little ran from September 3, 2020 until October 28, 2020 at Rosenbaum Contemporary in Boca Raton, Florida. [16] [17]

Little's work was included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial. [18]

Little currently teaches at the Art Students League of New York. He was formerly represented by the June Kelly Gallery in Manhattan and is now represented by Louis Stern Fine Arts in West Hollywood and the Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago, where his work was the subject of a solo exhibition in November 2022. [5] [4] [19]

His work is the subject of the 2005 paperback publication James Little: Reaching for the Sky, which features 13 color reproductions of his pieces and essays by Robert C. Morgan, George N'Namdi, Al Loving, Robert Costa, Horace Brockington, and James Haritas. [20]

Awards

In 2009, Little won a Joan Mitchell Foundation award. [21] He has also been the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. [22]

Curation

In 2019, Little curated the exhibition New York Centric at the American Fine Arts Society gallery, which included the work of multiple generations of abstract artists associated with the great Metropolis, among them Alma Thomas, Alvin Loving, Larry Poons, Stanley Boxer, Peter Reginato, Dan Christensen, Ronnie Landfield, Gabriele Evertz, Charles Hinman, Thornton Willis, Doug Ohlson, Robert Swain, and Ed Clark. [23] [24] [25]

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hard-edge painting</span> Movement in painting

Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas often consist of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kirk Varnedoe</span> American art historian

John Kirk Train Varnedoe was an American art historian, the chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) from 1988 to 2001, Professor of the History of Art at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and Professor of Fine Arts at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronnie Landfield</span> American painter

Ronnie Landfield is an American abstract painter. During his early career from the mid-1960s through the 1970s his paintings were associated with Lyrical Abstraction, and he was represented by the David Whitney Gallery and the André Emmerich Gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyrical abstraction</span> Art movement

Lyrical abstraction is either of two related but distinct trends in Post-war Modernist painting:

Torben Giehler is a German abstract artist.

Don Voisine is an American abstract painter living in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, USA. In the fall of 2016, "X/V," a 15 year survey of his work, was organized by the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME. In 1997 he was elected a member of American Abstract Artists and became President of the group in 2004. Voisine was elected to the National Academy in 2010. His work is included in the public collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Cincinnati Art Museum,Cincinnati, OH; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem MA; the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; the Missoula Art Museum, Missoula, MT and the National Academy, New York, NY.

Brice Brown is an American artist who lives and works in New York City.

Carol Lorraine Sutton is a multidisciplinary artist born in Norfolk, Virginia, USA and now living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is a painter whose works on canvas and paper have been shown in 32 solo exhibits as well as being included in 94 group shows. Her work, which ranges from complete abstraction to the use of organic and architectural images, relates to the formalist ideas of Clement Greenberg and is noted for the use of color. Some of Sutton paintings have been related to ontology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alvin D. Loving</span> African-American abstract expressionist painter (1935 - 2005)

Alvin D. Loving Jr., better known as Al Loving, was an African-American abstract expressionist painter. His work is known for hard-edge abstraction, dyed fabric paintings, and large paper collages, all exploring complicated color relationships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thornton Willis</span> American abstract painter (born 1936)

Thornton Willis is an American abstract painter. He has contributed to the New York School of painting since the late 1960s. Viewed as a member of the Third Generation of American Abstract Expressionists, his work is associated with Abstract Expressionism, Lyrical Abstraction, Process Art, Postminimalism, Bio-morphic Cubism and Color Field painting.

Amy Feldman is an American abstract painter from Brooklyn, New York.

Moira Dryer (1957–1992) was a Canadian artist known for her abstract paintings on wood panel.

Margaret Withers is an American painter, sculptor and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sharon Gold</span> American painter

Sharon Gold is an American artist and associate professor of painting at Syracuse University. Gold's artwork has been installed at MoMA PS1, Dia Art Foundation, Carnegie Mellon University, Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Everson Museum of Art, and Princeton University Art Museum. She was a fellow at MacDowell Colony. Gold's work has been reviewed by Arthur Danto, Donald Kuspit, Ken Johnson, and Stephen Westfall in a variety of publications from Artforum to the New York Times, New York Magazine, Arts Magazine, Art News, and many others. She also taught at Princeton University, Pratt Institute, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Francisco Art Institute, and the Tyler School of Art. Gold received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and wrote for Re-View Magazine, M/E/A/N/I/N/G/S, and Artforum. Her artwork spans across minimalism, monochromatic abstraction, geometric abstraction, and representational painting and is conceptually informed by structuralism, existential formalism, and feminist theory.

John Zurier is an American abstract painter, known for his minimal, near-monochrome paintings. His work has shown across the United States as well as in Europe and Japan. He has worked in Reykjavik, Iceland and Berkeley, California. Zurier lives in Berkeley, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sidney Tillim</span> American painter

Sidney Tillim was an American artist and art critic, known for his maverick painting and independent point of view on modern art in post-war America. Best remembered for his revival of history painting in the 1970s, Tillim alternated between the figurative and the abstract throughout his career. Likewise, although he wrote on a wide range of topics for Artforum and Arts Magazine, he is most identified with supporting representational art when few did.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Kord</span> American painter and educator

Victor George Kord is an American painter and educator. He currently maintains a studio and exhibits in New York City. He previously served as art department chair for several major universities, and remains professor emeritus of painting at Cornell University Department of Art.

Allie McGhee is a Detroit-based African American painter and pillar of the Detroit art community since the 1960s. Allie McGhee attended Cass Technical High School in Detroit, MI, and completed his undergraduate work at Eastern Michigan University in 1965.

Erick Johnson is an American contemporary artist living and working in New York City. His primary media are oil painting, drawing and photography.

Andrea Belag is a contemporary abstract painter. Belag studied the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture after attending Boston University and Bard College. She was a Faculty Member at the School of Visual Arts, in New York from 1995 to 2021.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Ploski, Harry A.; Williams, James; Williams, James De Bois (1989). The Negro Almanac: A Reference Work on the African American. Gale Research. p. 1061. ISBN   978-0-8103-7706-6.
  2. 1 2 "James Little's Black Paintings are a 'Volley of Minimalist Ideals' Exposing the Drama, Richness, and Contrasting Values of Black". Culturetype.com. October 22, 2020.
  3. 1 2 McGee, Celia (1 January 2011). "Driven to Abstraction". ARTnews . Retrieved 2022-02-05.
  4. 1 2 3 Sheets, Hilarie M. (March 19, 2020). "Color and Design Matter. So Does Optimism". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331.
  5. 1 2 "James Little by LeRonn P. Brooks". Bomb . April 19, 2017.
  6. ↑ Stirling, Diane (8 March 2024). "American Artist James Little G'76 Gifts Painting to Syracuse University Art Museum". Syracuse University News . Retrieved 8 March 2024.
  7. ↑ "James Little".
  8. ↑ "12 Standouts at the 2022 Whitney Biennial, Where Poetic Reflections on Past Two Years Shine Brightly". 29 March 2022.
  9. ↑ Panero, James (June 2013). "Gallery chronicle". The New Criterion.
  10. ↑ "James Little", Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University.
  11. ↑ McGee, Celia (January 1, 2011). "Driven to Abstraction". artnews.com.
  12. ↑ "MoMA through Time".
  13. ↑ "James Little Bio". Junekellygallery.com. Archived from the original on 2021-03-02. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
  14. ↑ "Installation view of "Challenge of the Will" (1979) by James Little in the P.S. 1 exhibition, "Afro-American Abstraction" (February 17-April 6, 1980)". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  15. ↑ "MTA - Arts & Design | LIRR Permanent Art". Web.mta.info. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  16. ↑ "Exhibitions Debut Across the Palm Beaches". 4 September 2020.
  17. ↑ "Louise Nevelson + James Little | September 8 - October 31, 2020 - Overview". Rosenbaum Contemporary. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  18. ↑ Durón, Maximilíano (25 January 2022). "Taking the Title 'Quiet as It's Kept,' 2022 Whitney Biennial Names 63 Participating Artists". ARTnews . Retrieved 2022-02-05.
  19. ↑ "Forthcoming James Little | 12 November - 20 December 2022". Kavi Gupta Gallery. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  20. ↑ James Little: Reaching for the Sky. G.R. N'Namdi Gallery. January 2005.
  21. ↑ "James Little". Joan Mitchell Foundation. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  22. ↑ "Chromatic Rhythm — James Little: Paintings on Paper – Department of Art and Art History". 11 August 2021.
  23. ↑ "New York-Centric". Asllinea.org. 18 March 2019. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  24. ↑ Corwin, William (1 May 2019). "New York-Centric". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  25. ↑ "Paint, abstract art, focus of James Little curated exhibition at Art Students League". 21 March 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.