Ronald Bladen

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File:Ronald Bladen (1968).jpg
Ronald Bladen (1968)

Ronald Bladen (1918- 1988) was an American painter and sculptor. He is particularly known for his large-scale sculptures.[1] His artistic stance, was influenced by European Constructivism, American Hard-Edge Painting, and sculptors such as Isamu Noguchi and David Smith.[2] Bladen in turn had stimulating effect on a circle of younger artists including Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and others, who repeatedly referred to him as one of the ‘father figures’ of Minimal Art.[3]

Early life

Charles Ronald Wells Bladen was born on July 13, 1918, to Muriel Beatrice Tylecote and Kenneth Bladen, both British immigrants living in Vancouver, Canada.[4] His mother studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and was active as part of the suffragette movement. In 1922 the family moved to the Washington state before returning to Canada to live in Victoria British Columbia in 1932.[5] The artist displayed his love of and capacity for art at a young age. At ten years old Bladen began drawing intensively, making copies of works by Titian, Picasso and Matisse. In 1937 the artist enrolled in the Vancouver School of Art where he studied until 1939.[6]

San Francisco

In 1939 the artist moved to San Francisco where he enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts.[7] In 1941, when drafted and subsequently declared unfit for service, the artist was obliged to work as a ship’s welder at the navy dockyards.[8] This training proved invaluable. Using the skills he learned in this capacity the artist supported him for many years as a toolmaker.

In 1946 Bladen traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, New Orleans and New York on a grant from the San Francisco Art Association. In 1948 he was married to the actress Barbara Gross. They separated in 1955[9] and he moved into a communal household with poet Michael McClure, and painter Al Held, who would remain a lifelong friend. During this time he also befriended the writers Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller and Allen Ginsberg.[10]

New York

In 1956, Bladen moved to New York where he lived on Houston Street. Through Al Held he met George Sugarman and Nicholas Krushenick and John Krushenick, who together founded the Brata Gallery co-operative in 1957. The artist’s paintings from this period mark a departure from his earlier romantic works.[11] They are defined by highly concentrated segments of color set against monochromatic backgrounds. In 1960, he took over Al Held’s studio at 5 west 21st Street, where he began to focus on making collages of folded paper and large scale plywood relief paintings.[12] In 1962, he exhibited his plywood paintings for the first time at the Brata Gallery and the Green Gallery[13] in New York. The following year he made his first free-standing, colored sculptures from plywood boards with metal struts. From this time on the artist dedicated himself exclusively to sculpture. In 1964, he showed his first sculpture, White Z, at an exhibition in the Park Place Gallery in New York where he befriended Connie Reyes, who later became his companion. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts by the National Endowment of the Arts.[14] In 1966, he showed a tripartite work made the previous year, Three Elements, at the exhibition, Primary Structures Younger American and British Artists, in the Jewish Museum in New York. A seminal moment in the history of sculpture, this exhibition brought the language of minimal sculpture into the public eye.[15] Artists represented in the exhibition include Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Walter De Maria Robert Morris and others. In 1967 he was included in the Scale as Content exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, which brought together important sculptures by Ronald Bladen, Barnett Newman and Tony Smith, he showed his monumental sculpture, The X.[16] In 1968, Bladen was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, was represented at documenta 4 in Kassel, and was among the circle of artists presented to a European art public under the title, Minimal Art, West Berlin.[17] Starting in 1967 he received a number of important public commissions including: The Cathedral Evening,[18] 1969 for city of Albany (New York), Vroom Sh-Sh-Sh in 1974 for Buffalo (New York), and Raiko I in 1975 for Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf.

Teaching

From 1974 to 1976, Bladen taught as a guest lecturer at Columbia University[19] in New York and was awarded the Mark Rothko Fellowship in 1975. In 1976, Bladen was appointed teacher at the Parsons The New School for Design, a post he held until 1978 and he also taught at the School of Visual Arts. He was an Artist in Residence in 1981/1982 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Maine), and in 1982-1983 as a guest lecturer at Yale University in New Haven (Connecticut). In 1977, he was once again awarded the National Endowment of the Arts.[20]

Public Commissions

Starting in 1967 Ronald Bladen received a number of important public commissions including: The Cathedral Evening for Albany, New York,[21] 1969 Vroom Sh-Sh-Sh for Buffalo, New York, 1974, Raiko for Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf, 1975, Cosmic Seed for Des Moines (Iowa), 1977, Kama Sutra for Central Park, New York, New York, 1978, Oracle’s Vision for Springfield, Ohio, Black Lightning for Seattle[22] and the King Faisal University in Riyadh, Host of the Ellipse for Baltimore, Maryland, in 1981, and Sonar Tide for Peoria, Illinois, in 1983.[23]

Selected Exhibitions

  • 1956 Paintings by Ronald Bladen, Fine Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC[24]
  • 1965 Concrete Expressionism, Loeb Student Center, New York University, New York, NY[25]
  • 1966 Primary Structures. Younger American and British Sculptors, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY[26]
  • 1966-67 Annual Exhibition 1966, Contemporary American Sculpture and Prints, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY[27]
  • 1967 Ronald Bladen: Sculpture, Emily Lowe Gallery, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
  • Bladen, Grosvenor, von Schlegell, Loeb Student Center, New York University, New York, NY
  • American Sculpture of the Sixties, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA,[28] traveling to Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia PA
  • Structural Art, American Federation of Art, New York, NY, traveling
  • Rejective Art, University of Omaha, Fine Arts Festival, Omaha, NE
  • Guggenheim International Exhibition, 1967: Sculpture from Twenty Nations, The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY[29]
  • 1967-68 Scale as Content: Ronald Bladen, Barnett Newman, Tony Smith, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC[30]
  • 1968 documenta 4, Kassel, Germany Minimal Art (Andre, Bladen, Flavin, Grosvenor, Judd, LeWitt, Morris, Smith, Smithson, Steiner) Gmeentemuseum,[31] The Hague, The Netherlands, traveling to: Städtische Kunsthalle und Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Akademie der ssünste, Berlin Annual Exhibition[32]
  • 1968, Contemporary American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY[33]
  • 1969 14 Sculptors: The Industrial Edge, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN[34]
  • 1970 American Sculpture, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, The University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
  • 1972 Ronald Bladen and Allan d’Arcangelo, Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI[35]
  • 1973 Biennial Exhibition: Contemporary American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
  • Art in Space: Some Turning Points, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI[36]
  • 1974 Less is More: The Influence of the Bauhaus on American Art, Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, traveling to the New York Cultural Center, New York, NY
  • 1975 The Martha Jackson Collection at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Albright- Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY[37]
  • 1976 200 Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY[38]
  • The Golden Door: Artist-Immigrants of America 1876-1976, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC[39]
  • 1977 Project: New Urban Monuments, Akron Art Institute, Akron, OH[40]
  • 1979 The Minimal Tradition, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT
  • Contemporary Sculpture: Selections from the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
  • 1986 Sculpture on the Wall, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT
  • 1991 Ronald Bladen: Early and Late, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, traveling to Vancouver Art Museum, Vancouver, BC[41]
  • 1995 Ronald Bladen: Drawings and Sculptural Models, Weatherspoon Art Gallery,[42] The University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, traveling to Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY
  • Beat Culture and the New America: 1950–1965, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, traveling to: The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; MH de Young Memorial Museum, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
  • 1996 The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism, Laguna Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA, traveling to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA[43]
  • 1998 Ronald Bladen Sculpture, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany[44]
  • 1999 Ronald Bladen: Selected Works, PS1/ MoMA Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY[45]
  • 2000 „Kontrapunkt“, Werke von Nam June Paik and Ronald Bladen, RWE-Turm, Essen, Germany
  • 2004 A Minimal Future? Art as Object. 1958-1968, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA[46]
  • 2007 Ronald Bladen-Skulptur. Werke der Sammlung Marzona, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany

References: Selected Bibliography

1965

Ashton, Dore. “3 Centuries of American Painting: New York Commentary.” Studio International 170, no. 868, August 1965, pp. 87–88, ill. Robins, Corinne. “Six Artists and the New Extended Vision.” Arts Magazine 39, no. 10, September–October 1965, pp. 19–22, ill.

1966

Sandler, Irving. “Ronald Bladen: ’…Sensations of a different order…’.” Artforum 5, no. 2, October 1966, pp. 32–35, ill. Smithson, Robert. “Entropy and the New Monuments.” Artforum 4, no. 10, June 1966, pp. 26– 31, ill.

1967

Lippard, Lucy R. “Ronald Bladen’s Black Triangle.” Artforum 5, no. 7, March 1967, pp. 26–27, ill. Perreault, John. “A Minimal Future?: Union-Made.” Arts Magazine 41, no. 5, March 1967, pp. 26, 28-29, ill. Fried, Michael. “Art and Objecthood.” Artforum 5, no. 10, June 1967, pp. 19 & 23. Mellow, James R. Art International II, no. 2, February 1967, p. 66, ill. Siegel, Jeanne, Arts Magazine 41, no. 4, February 1967, pp. 56–57, ill. Waldman, Diane. Art News 65, no. 10, February 1967, p. 10.

1969

Pinney, Marguerite. “Top Canadian Sculptors to have Major Show Here.” Vancouver Province, January 29, 1969. Reise, Barbara. “’Untitled, 1969’: A Footnote on art and Minimal-Stylehood.” Studio International 177, no. 910, April 1969, pp.166, 171-172, 178, ill.

1970

Kline, Katherine. Art News 68, no. 10, February 1970, p. 14. Nemser, Cindy. Arts Magazine 44, no. 4, February 1970, p. 64. Pincus-Witten, Robert. Artforum 8, no. 7, March 1970, p. 81, ill. Vinklers, Bitite. Art International 14, no. 3, March 1970, pp. 93-94, ill. “Major Bladen and Murray Exhibit.” Artweek I, no. 12, March 21, 1970, p. 3.

1971

Domingo, Willis. Arts Magazine 45, no. 8, Summer 1971, pp. 52–53, ill. Henry, Gerrit. Art International 15, no. 5, June 1971, pp. 81–82, ill. Linville, Kasha. Artforum 9, no. 10, June 1971, pp. 86–87, ill. Wolmer, Bruce. Art News 70, no. 4, Summer 1971, pp. 10–11, ill.

1972

Schjeldahl, Peter. The New York Times, January 23, 1972, sec. 2, p. 21, ill. Henry, Gerrit. Art News, 70, no. 10, February 1972, pp. 12–13. Wolmer, Denise. Arts Magazine, 46, no. 4, February 1972, p. 57. Ratcliff, Carter. Art International 16, no. 3, March 1972. Jürgen-Fischer, Klaus. “Ronald Bladen.” Kunstwerk 25, no. 2, March 1972, pp. 16–21, ill. Schwartz, Barbara. Craft Horizons 32, no. 2, April 1972. Baker, Kenneth. “Ronald Bladen.” Artforum 10, no. 8, April 1972, pp. 79–80, ill. Bell, Jane. Arts Magazine 47, no. 3, December 1972/January 1973, pp. 78–79, ill. Henry, Gerrit. Art News 71, no. 8, December 1972, p. 73.

1973

Kingsley, April. Artforum 11, no. 6, February 1973, p. 89, ill. Welish, Marjorie. Art International 17, no. 1, January, 1973, p. 74.

1974

Kingsley, April. “Ronald Bladen-Romantic Formalist.” Art International 18, no. 7, September 1974, pp. 42–44, ill.

1977 Glueck, Grace. The New York Times, December 30, 1977, sec. C, p. 24, ill. Kingsley, April. “Art for All.” Village Voice, December 12, 1977, p. 86.

1978 Hess, Thomas B. New York, January 9, 1978, p. 58, ill. Kingsley, April. Village Voice, February 23, 1978, p. 64.

1980 Cohen, Ronny H. Artforum 9, no. 11, September 1980, pp. 72–73, ill.

1982 Glueck, Grace. “Artist’s Artists.” Art News 81, no. 9, November 1982, p. 90, ill. Statement by Louise Bourgeois on Ron Bladen.

1986 Brenson, Michael. The New York Times, February 7, 1986, sec. 2, p. 2, ill. Sorkin, Emily. “The Schulpture of Ronald Bladen.” Arts Magazine. McDonnell, Joseph. Art/World, vol. 10, no. 5, February 1986, pp. 1–2. Masters, Greg. Arts. 60, no. 7, March 1986, p. 139, ill. Cohen, Ronny. “From X to Now.” ARTforum 24, no. 9, May 1986, pp. 100–101, ill.

1987 Ellis, Stephen. “Expanded Pictograms,” Art in America 75, no. 4, April 1987, pp. 204–9, ill.

1988 Gibson, Eric. “In Remembrance.” Sculpture 7, no. 3, May – June 1988, pp. 34–35, ill.

Glueck, Grace. The New York Times, February 4, 1988, sec. B 16. Obituary Brandon Sun (Brandon Manitoba), February 6, 1988. Obituary. Bladen, Barbara. “Sculptors Death Stirs Up Glow,” The New York Times, February 8, 1988, p. C 9. Brenson, Michael. Review, The New York Times, March 4, 1988. Rubinstein, Meyer and Daniel Wiener. Review, Flash Art, May–June 1988, p. 103, ill. Gibson, Eric. “In Remembrance,” Sculpture, May–June 1988, pp. 34–35, ill.

1989 Smith, Roberta. Review, The New York Times, February 24, 1989. Larson, Kay. Review, New York Magazine, February 27, 1989, p. 150. Smith, Robarta. “From the 50’s, A Series of Brushes with Greatness,” The New York Times, March 19, 1989. Yau, John. “A Month of Valentines,” Cover, February 1989. Kuspit, Donald. Review, ARTforum. May 1989, p. 149, ill. Westfall, Stephen. Review, Art in America, July 1989.

1990 Yau, John. Review, ARTforum. Summer 1990, p. 61.

1991 Ronald Bladen: Early and Late, exhibition catalog, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. (curator: Bill Berkson) Baker, Kenneth. “Several Visions of Ronald Bladen.” Datebook, June 9, 1991. Crohn, Jennifer. Review, Arts Magazine, November 1991, p. 89, ill.

1992 Berkson, Bill. “Bladen: Against Gravity.” Art in America, January 1992, pp. 80–85, ill.

1995 Ronald Bladen: Early and Late, exhibition catalog, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. (curator: Douglas Dreishpoon)

1996 “Report from San Francisco; Bay Area Bravura.” Art in America, September 1996, pp. 45– 47, ill. Cotter, Holland. “Warm Minimalism Rooted in Poetry,” The New York Times, November 1, 1996, ill. Knight, Christopher. “An Enlightening Show of Abstract Expressionism.” The New York Times, February 2, 1996, ill.

1998 Ronald Bladen: Sculpture, exhibition catalog, Kunsthalle Bielfeld. (curator:Thomas Kellein) Bell, J. Bower. “Abstracted Presence,” Review, February 1, 1998, p. 43. “Ronald Bladen erstmals in Europa,” Neue Westfalische, June 16, 1998. “Metergobe Minimal Plastiken,” Neue Westfalische, June 6, 998. “Westfalen-Blatt,” Kultur, June 5, 1998. “Kunstwerke von Ronald Bladen fur Kunsthalle – Suggestive Skulpturen,” Neue Westfalische, May 29, 1998. “Premiee in der Kunsthalle,” Neue Westfalische – Westfalen-Blatt, May 28, 1998. “Dramaturgie der Kraft,” Der Kunsthandel, Lg. 90 (1998), Nr. 7, July 7, 1998. “Leer-Stoff – Bladen and Demand in Der Kunsthalle,” Ultimo, July 8, 1998, ill. “Dominaz und Asthetic der reinen geometrischen Form,” Kultur/NRM, July 1998, ill. Kunstwerke von Ronald Bladen fur Kunsthalle, Suggestive Skulturen, Kultur/NRW, July 1998, ill. “Zeitgenossche Kunst,” Feuilleton, August 1, 1998. “Extreme Bezuge,” Kultur, August 24, 1998. “Der Verfremdete Raum-Skultpuren von Ronald Bladen un Fotos von Thomas Demond in der Bielefelder Kunsthalle,” Bielefeld Journal, Herbst 1998, pp. 32–33, September 4, 1998.

1999 Johnson, Ken. “A Romantic Pushes Minimalism to the Maximum,” The New York Times, February 19, 1999, ill. Schwendencer, M. “Minimal to the Max, P.S. 1 Reveals the Romantic Behind the Rational Art of Ronald Bladen,” Time Out, New York, March 18–25, 1999. Stevens, Mark. “Maximal Minimalist,” New York Magazine, March 8, 1999, ill. Meyer, James. “Ronald Bladen: P.S. 1 Contemporary Arts Center, New York,” ARTforum, May 1999, p. 174, ill.

2004 Kipling, Kay. “More than Minimal: a Selby Gallery exhibition this month sheds new light on the diverse and often dramatic work of the late Ronald Bladen,” Sarasota Magazine, February 1. 2004, ill. Jenkins, Susan L. “Ronald Bladen.” In A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968. Ed. Anne Goldstein. Los Angeles, CA: The Museum of Contemporary Art & Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004. 172-75, ill.

2005 Sheets, Hilarie M. “Underrated Overrated: Which artists have been overlooked? And which have we been looking at too much?” ARTnews, January 2005, pp. 100–109, ill.

References

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