Phyllis Mark

Last updated • 5 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Phyllis Mark was an American modern artist (January 20, 1921 – May 23, 2004). She was a leading proponent of kinetic sculpture, rotating indoor works on motors, outdoor works by wind or water. Mark also had an enduring interest in light. She first generated light within the work itself, using small electric bulbs. Later she began to work in polished metal, creating interactions between the work, its reflections, and cast shadows. She was an early proponent of sculptural editions, first in small scale, her Sculpture-to-wear, art conceived as jewelry, later in her larger kinetic works. Throughout her career, Mark explored concepts in her art alongside pure abstraction. An important example in two dimensions is a form of picture writing that she termed Color Alphabet. In her sculptures, conceptual interests, always implicit, became increasing explicit over time. In late career she executed a number of large-scale works, photographed the work and its intended site, and "sited" the work in photomontage. [1]

Contents

Life and career

Mark was born in New York City and centered her career there. She studied with Grace Greenwood, a 'New Deal' social realist painter active in the WPA, and with Seymour Lipton, a major proponent of abstract expressionist sculpture, both at The New School. [2] Fritz Glarner was a family friend and was a sounding board and mentor at important stages of her career.

Early career

Mark began her career as an expressionist figural painter in the early 1950s. Later in that decade and in the early '60s, her painting became increasingly abstract, tending to shapes that evoke plant and primitive life forms, so-called Biomorphism. The evolution of Mark's painting in these years can be traced in three one-woman exhibitions in her native New York City, the first at the Verna Wear Gallery, 1957, the second and third at the Kaymar Gallery, 1962 and 1964. [3]

Wood relief sculpture

In the mid '60s Mark first experimented with wood relief. Most of these reliefs had a raised biomorphic black shape against a white background. Some hid small lights behind the relief, others added visible lights. The raised relief and added lights transformed the shadows of the work from an incidental and passive element of gallery installation to a manipulated element of composition: form and shadow. The artist exhibited works of this stage in a one-woman show at the Ruth White Gallery, Manhattan, NY, in 1966. [4]

Anodized aluminum

Soon after her 1966 show, Mark began working in polished, anodized aluminum. These sculptures continued her biomorphic interests, but the polished surfaces of the sculpture created shadows and reflected light: form, shadow, reflection. Fabricators produced these works to the artist's design and under her supervision. Some were unique works, but Mark began at this time to commission numbered editions of her designs, "multiples". [5]

Suspended and table-top kinetic sculpture

Early table-top kinetic sculpture on motorized base. Bacchanal, 1968. Polished anodized aluminum. 24". 'Bacchanal' by Phyllis Mark,1968.jpg
Early table-top kinetic sculpture on motorized base. Bacchanal, 1968. Polished anodized aluminum. 24”.

Mark's earliest kinetic sculptures moved on rotating bases. In later works she suspended central planar forms within one or more circular, oval or rectangular frames: the interior elements moved within their rotating frames.

Sculpture with moving elements, kinetic sculpture, remained a guiding interest of this artist through the rest of her career. Her first aluminum and early kinetic sculptures were exhibited at Ruth White Gallery in 1968. [6]

Sculpture-to-wear

In the early 1970s Mark conceived the idea to execute her designs in miniature as jewelry, her Sculpture-to-wear. A major turning point of her career came in 1972, when the Museum of Modern Art commissioned an edition of 100 Sculpture-to-wear, individually numbered, 23-karat gold-plated aluminum, for sale in its gift shop. This edition, entitled Kinetic Circle, was followed by a second MoMA gift shop commission, Quadrille, again an edition of 100 in gold-plate. [7] In agreement with MoMA, the artist manufactured these same designs in aluminum, unplated, in numbered editions of 250, for sale elsewhere. These same years saw the artist initiate other Sculpture-to-wear designs, editions of 100/250, including Seahorse Oval, Aztec Memory, Arabesque, Enclosed Triangles, some ten designs in all. These were for sale at her one-woman exhibitions, and were on permanent display at a number of galleries, including Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer in Manhattan; Fontana Gallery, Narberth, PA; Gallerie 99, Bay Harbor Islands, FL; Images Gallery, Toledo, OH; and Rubiner Gallery, Royal Oak, MI. [8]

Color alphabet

Alongside her sculpture, Mark continued her early work in two dimensions. Important among these works was a series of visual poems executed in a pictorial alphabet. She created this visual language by pairing small, simple, visually distinct compositions, one for each letter of the alphabet, and transcribing poems and short phrases to their visual equivalent. The sequence of forms is difficult, nearly impossible to decode fluently back to the original (to guide the viewer she usually included the original text to one side or in the margins of the composition), but the repetition of common pronouns and prepositions is visually evident, and common letter groupings and patterns of the language introduce visual rhythms that structure the whole. [9]

Outdoor kinetic sculpture

The earliest of Mark's large metal sculptures, although not explicitly conceived for outdoor setting, were suitable for the outdoors, and several were so exhibited at the Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY, first in 1974. [10]

Wind Intervals, 1976. Stainless and enameled steel. Each unit, 11' tall on a 3' square base. The units turn in the wind. Phyllis Mark 'Wind Intervals,' 1976.jpg
Wind Intervals, 1976. Stainless and enameled steel. Each unit, 11' tall on a 3' square base. The units turn in the wind.

Soon after, Mark began to actively explore the kinetic potential of outdoor siting. She completed and sited the earliest of these works, Wind Intervals, under the auspices of a non-profit artists' collaborative active at that time, Artists Representing Environmental Arts (A.R.E.A.), and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Wind Intervals stood on New York's Roosevelt Island from 1976 to 1983. [11]

Pyramid Butterfly installed in Robert Moses Plaza, Fordham University at Lincoln Center, NYC, 1985. Painted steel and aluminum. 9,5' H x 8' W x 6.5' D. Center pivots in the wind. Phyllis Mark, 'Pyramid Butterfly,' 1985.jpg
Pyramid Butterfly installed in Robert Moses Plaza, Fordham University at Lincoln Center, NYC, 1985. Painted steel and aluminum. 9,5' H x 8' W x 6.5' D. Center pivots in the wind.

A late example of her large outdoor kinetic sculptures, Pyramid Butterfly, 1985, stood in Robert Moses Plaza, Fordham University at Lincoln Center, from spring 1985 to fall 1986. [12]

Later career

Toward 1989 and throughout the 1990s, Mark executed a series of large-scale sculptures, photographed the works and their intended sites, and sited the works in photomontage. These sculptures and photomontages were exhibited in a one-woman show entitled Improbable Sites at SOHO20 Gallery, New York, NY, in 1990. [13] This site-specific art developed the conceptual considerations of artistic form and siting that were already present, if less explicit, in her work with A.R.E.A.

Archives

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, NY. Miscellaneous archival materials. Smithsonian, Archives of American Art, Phyllis Mark papers, 1930-1977. Papers from 1977 to the artist's decease remain at present with her estate.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marianne Brandt</span> German artist and designer associated with Bauhaus

Marianne Brandt was a German painter, sculptor, photographer, metalsmith, and designer who studied at the Bauhaus art school in Weimar and later became head of the Bauhaus Metall-Werkstatt in Dessau in 1928. Today, Brandt's designs for household objects such as lamps and ashtrays are considered timeless examples of modern industrial design. Although she pursued painting early in life and attended a private art school and the Grand Ducal College of Art in Weimar from 1912–1917, where she produced many works in the Expressionists style and also studied sculpture, the artist is best known for her sleek and elegant industrial designs.Brandt also worked with photography at the Bauhaus, taking photographs that featured unusual angles—in particular, self-portraits—and disorienting and distorting reflections in glass and metal surfaces.She worked as head of the design department of the company Ruppelwerk Metallwarenfabrik GmbH in Gotha until 1932. In 1949, she worked at the University of Applied Arts until 1954. In the year, 1954 she also supervised the exhibition, The German applied art of the GDR) in Beijing and Shanghai in 1953–54. She also created photomontages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kinetic art</span> Genre of artworks that contains movement

Kinetic art is art from any medium that contains movement perceivable by the viewer or that depends on motion for its effects. Canvas paintings that extend the viewer's perspective of the artwork and incorporate multidimensional movement are the earliest examples of kinetic art. More pertinently speaking, kinetic art is a term that today most often refers to three-dimensional sculptures and figures such as mobiles that move naturally or are machine operated. The moving parts are generally powered by wind, a motor or the observer. Kinetic art encompasses a wide variety of overlapping techniques and styles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellsworth Kelly</span> American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Ellsworth Kelly was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, color and form, similar to the work of John McLaughlin and Kenneth Noland. Kelly often employed bright colors. He lived and worked in Spencertown, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Frank</span> American painter and sculptor (1918–1986)

Jane Schenthal Frank was an American multidisciplinary artist, known as a painter, sculptor, mixed media artist, illustrator, and textile artist. Her landscape-like, mixed-media abstract paintings are included in public collections, including those of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She studied with artists, Hans Hofmann and Norman Carlberg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gego</span> Venezuelan artist, sculptor (1912–1994)

Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt, known as Gego, was a modern German-Venezuelan visual artist. Gego is perhaps best known for her geometric and kinetic sculptures made in the 1960s and 1970s, which she described as "drawings without paper".

The Art of This Century gallery was opened by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts district including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, Helena Rubinstein's New Art Center, and numerous commercial galleries. The gallery exhibited important modern art until it closed in 1947, when Guggenheim returned to Europe. The gallery was designed by architect, artist, and visionary Frederick Kiesler.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Holt</span> American artist

Nancy Holt was an American artist most known for her public sculpture, installation art, concrete poetry, and land art. Throughout her career, Holt also produced works in other media, including film and photography. Since 2018, her legacy has been cared for by Holt/Smithson Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teresa Żarnowerówna</span>

Teresa Żarnowerówna was a Polish avant-garde artist, painter, sculptor, scenographer, and architect.

Wire sculpture is the creation of sculpture or jewelry out of wire. The use of metal wire in jewelry dates back to the 2nd Dynasty in Egypt and to the Bronze and Iron Ages in Europe. In the 20th century, the works of Alexander Calder, Ruth Asawa, and other modern practitioners developed the medium of wire sculpture as an art form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathleen Kucka</span> American painter

Kathleen Kucka is an American visual artist whose practice includes abstract paintings, works on paper and prints. She is known for work that combines a conceptual approach with unique, sometimes unpredictable processes of mark-making such as the burning of canvas, pouring paint, and sewing. Critics note her work for its highly associative, open-ended quality, which evokes modernist formalism and natural phenomena from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic. Critic Stephanie Buhmann wrote that Kucka's work is inspired by nature and contemporary abstraction with attention to geometry, and leaves viewers "wondering if we are witnessing a scene documented through a microscope or captured from an aerial view ... we find ourselves reminded of the interrelations between all things, be they of a natural or man-made origin."

Agnes Denes is a Hungarian-born American conceptual artist based in New York. She is known for works in a wide range of media—from poetry and philosophical writings to extremely detailed drawings, sculptures, and iconic land art works, such as Wheatfield — A Confrontation (1982), a two-acre field of wheat in downtown Manhattan, commissioned by the Public Art Fund, and Tree Mountain—A Living Time Capsule (1992–96) in Ylöjärvi, Finland. Her work Rice/Tree/Burial with Time Capsule (1968–79) is recognized as one of the earliest examples of ecological art. She lives and works in New York City.

Alice Adams is an American artist known for her sculpture and site-specific land art in the 1970s and for her major public art projects in transit systems, airports, university campuses and other urban sites throughout the United States since 1986. Her earlier work in tapestry and woven forms was important in the American fiber art movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Rubins</span> American artist

Nancy Rubins is an American sculptor and installation artist. Her sculptural works are primarily composed of blooming arrangements of large rigid objects such as televisions, small appliances, camping and construction trailers, hot water heaters, mattresses, airplane parts, rowboats, kayaks, canoes, surfboards, and other objects. Works such as Big Edge at CityCenter in Las Vegas contain over 200 boat vessels. Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I, Built to Live Anywhere, at Home Here, at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, contains 66 used aluminum boats and rises to a height of 30 ft.

<i>Throwback</i> (1/3) Sculpture by Tony Smith

Throwback (1/3) is a public artwork by American artist Tony Smith, located in the Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC) Plaza at 1166 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Perless</span> American artist

Robert Perless is an American artist whose particular focus is kinetic art sculptures.

Lila Katzen, born Lila Pell, was an American sculptor of fluid, large-scale metal abstractions.

Karina Smigla-Bobinski (1967) is a German-Polish intermedia artist, working primarily in new media art and digital art, based in Berlin and Munich.Her work bridges kinetic art, drawing, video, installation, painting, performance and sculpture. Her works have been exhibited in Europe, Asia, North America and South America. One of her major works is ADA, a large, interactive kinetic sculpture and drawing machine.

Mark Greenwold is an American painter, born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1942, whose subjects often include figures in psychologically charged domestic interiors, executed with pathologically laborious detail. He began exhibiting in New York in the late 1970s, where he currently lives and works. Though he came of age in an art world known for minimalist and conceptual trends, his work has always centered around the figure and his style has fallen somewhere between surrealism and photo realism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marjorie Schick</span> American jewelry

Marjorie Schick was an innovative American jewelry artist and academic who taught art for 50 years. Approaching sculptural creations, her avant-garde pieces have been widely collected. Her works form part of the permanent collections of many of the world's leading art museums, including the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania; and the Victoria and Albert Museum of London.

Michelle Jaffé is an American interdisciplinary artist, known for her immersive participatory installations combining sculpture, sound, and performative video. Symbols, forms, and concepts in her work are often influenced by political, spiritual, and psychological themes. Prior to her career as an artist, Jaffé was notable in the New York City fashion scene for her hat and accessory designs.

References

  1. ↑ For a concise introduction to Mark’s artistic interests in her own words, see Artist’s Statement (pg. 3) in the published catalog: Phyllis Mark. Fort Wayne, IN: Fort Wayne Museum of Art. 1979.. See also the following published vitas: Fort Wayne Museum catalog pg. 14; exhibition catalog, Refractions, Reflections. Fort Lauderdale, FL: Fort Lauderdale Museum of the Arts. 1977.; and Who's Who in American Art . New York: R. R. Bowker Publishing., editions beginning 1973.
  2. ↑ Who's Who in American Art. New York: R. R. Bowker. 1973. p. 491..
  3. ↑ Photos of her two Kaymar exhibitions are at File:Phyllis_Mark-Kaymar_Gallery_1962.jpg and File:Phyllis_Mark-Kaymar_Gallery_1964.jpg.
  4. ↑ Works from this stage of Mark’s career are in the collections of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Inv. 66.069 (Elongated White Oval, 1966) and Syracuse University Art Galleries, Inv. 1967.41 (Orange Constellation with Lights, 1966). At Wikimedia, see photo File:'Black_Form_Flying'_by_Phyllis_Mark,1966.jpg.
  5. ↑ The artist made a statement concerning her multiples in a flyer prepared for her exhibition at Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery, New York, in 1973: File:Space_Being_Curved_1973_04.jpg.
  6. ↑ The announcement for this show, picturing an aluminum sculpture on a motorized base, is at Wikimedia: File:RuthWhiteAnnouncement1968.jpg
  7. ↑ A photo of Kinetic Circle in the MOMA catalog is at Wikimedia: File:MOMACatalog1972-'Kinetic_Circle'.jpg.
  8. ↑ Record of these editions and correspondence with the regional galleries that showed her work are among papers in the possession of the artist’s estate.
  9. ↑ An example from this series, executed in gouache, is in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Inv. 1978.129.165; a thumbnail and catalog description are published in Simmons, Linda Crocker (1983). American Drawings, Watercolors, Pastels and Collages in the Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art. p. 240.. Compare her Color Meditations, 1973, a series of small abstract compositions each paired to a whole word. Color Meditations is an edition, its paper, wide and narrow, accordion-folded between hard covers. One from this edition is in the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, Inv. LIB2000.900
  10. ↑ For example, Infinite Wall Module, 1974, File:PMark-Wall_Modules-BensonGallery1974.jpg; an edition of the same sculpture was installed indoors in the executive dining room of the (former) RCA Corporation, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, NYC, File:PMark-Infinite_Wall_Modules1974.jpg.
  11. ↑ A review of this installation by Grace Glueck, appeared in the New York Times on July 14, 1978.
  12. ↑ Pyramid Butterfly, and several other of the artist’s works that were then sited and on view, were discussed by Phyllis Braff, a New York Times arts critic, writing in Arts Magazine , May 1985, pg. 15.
  13. ↑ The show was reviewed in Manhattan Arts , March–April 1990, pg. 12. See Wikimedia filesFile:MoonScreen02-1989.jpg (sculpture) and File:PMark-InMyFather'sWood02-1989.jpg (montage).
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.