Idelle Weber

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Idelle Lois Weber (born Tessie Pasternack; March 12, 1932 – March 23, 2020) was an

Photorealist
movements.

Early life

Weber was born in

Brenda Starr and Dick Tracy comic books.[2]

At the age of eight, Weber's family relocated to Southern California in an effort to treat her severe allergies. The museum scene there was not as robust as in Chicago, but she found plenty to support her passion for art. She would ride her bicycle to Frank Perls' gallery for critiques on her own artwork. She was exposed to the work of modern masters Matisse, Rodin, and Degas.[2] Her high school dissertation looked at the seemingly disparate work of Edward Hopper and Jackson Pollock.[4] Receiving a full tuition, she attended Scripps College in Claremont, California. Briefly, Weber attended the Aspen Design Conference, which was deeply influential to her developing artistic style, introducing a graphic and bold aesthetic. She went on to study at UCLA, with William Brice, Frederick S. Wight, and Stanton Macdonald-Wright. She received a BA in 1954 and an MA in 1955. After school she shared a studio with Craig Kauffman and Walter Hopps and the three of them became engaged with images of New York School abstraction.

Career

In 1956, Weber's work Observation of Sound, a charcoal work of the previous year, was selected from 5,000 entries by curator

MoMA, arranged for her to meet art historian H. W. Janson, who admired Weber's work but stated that he did not include women painters in his books.[5] Charles Allen, owner of the Allen Gallery, similarly indicated that he did not show women artists.[5] Weber attended an illustration and design class taught by Alexander Liberman at the School of Visual Arts, but when she asked Robert Motherwell if she could audit his class at Hunter College, he responded that married women with children were not permitted to audit classes because they would not continue painting.[5]
Weber had married earlier that year. In 1958, her son was born, followed by a daughter in 1964, yet she continued painting.

She attended classes at the

Castelli Gallery. She became particularly close with Yayoi Kusama, Lucas Samaras, Claes Oldenburg, and Agnes Martin.[5]

During the early 1960s, Weber's work mainly consisted of silhouette paintings against brightly colored, checkerboard backgrounds. Her preferred subjects were anonymous figures engaged in everyday activities, such as a group of friends playing cards (Hearts, 1964), or business men riding escalators (Munchkins I, II, & III, 1964). Munchkins was the largest work she ever created; it was painted on three canvases butted together. She painted each canvas in a different room in her small apartment.[2] She began making large-scale Plexiglas sculptures in 1965. Jumprope Lady was her first successful attempt at transposing her silhouette paintings into three-dimensions.[5]

In the late 1960s, Weber switched from her early

John DeAndrea, John Salt, and Ralph Goings, among others.[5]

Weber taught graduate drawing and painting at

Amagansett, NY and the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, where she was also artist-in-residence
.

While teaching at Harvard in the 1990s, Weber began working in

monotypes and created a series of small black and white works inspired by television coverage of the Gulf War. Moving from small to large scale, the experience working in monotype resulted in a dramatic change in her painting style.[6] A severe allergy to most solvents forced her to stop working with oil paint in 1995.[5] In 2000, she began working in collage, culminating in a major installation, Head Room, at the Contemporary Gallery at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn, NY. Weber continued to live and work in New York City. She died in Los Angeles on March 23, 2020 at the age of 88.[1]

Acquisition of Munchkin I, II, III

In 2013, the

PanAm Building, which had been completed in New York the year before. Online art publication Blouin ArtInfo announced the acquisition with the headline, "Chrysler Museum Acquires Original "Mad Men" Painting by Neglected Pop Artist Idelle Weber". The story also reported that the work was one of three by Weber acquired by the museum at that time.[7] The other two paintings, High Ceiling—You Won’t Get This and Mr. Chrysler also reference the gender stereotypes of the American workplace in the 1960s. The titular Mr. Chrysler made the work all the more appropriate for that museum's collection. The purchase occurred at a time that Weber was resurfacing with renewed critical interest.[8]

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Selected public collections

Selected bibliography

Books

  • Battcock, Gregory. Super Realism: A Critical Anthology. E.P. Dutton & Company. New York, New York. 1975.
  • Lindey, Christine. Surrealist Painting and Sculpture. William Morrow. New York, New York. 1980.
  • Meisel, Louis and Helene Zucker Seeman. Photorealism. Harry N. Abrams. New York, New York. 1980.
  • Rubenstein, Charlotte S. American Women Artists: From Early Indian Times to Present. G.K. Hall. Chicago, Illinois. 1982.
  • Battcock, Gregory, ed. The American Photorealists: An Anthology. Fischer Fine Arts, Ltd. London, United Kingdom, 1983.
  • Finch, Christopher. American Watercolors. Abbeville Press. New York, New York, 1986.
  • Baur, John I. H. Realism Today: American Drawings from the Rita Rich Collection. National Academy of Design. New York, New York, 1987.
  • Ward, John. American Realists Painting 1945-1960. UMI Press. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1989.
  • Ragans, Rosalyn. Art Connections. SRA-McGraw/Hill. Columbus, Ohio, 1997.
  • New, Jennifer. Drawing From Life: The Journal as Art. Princeton Architectural Press. New York, New York, 2005.
  • Sachs, Sid. "Idelle Weber: The Pop Years". Hollis Taggart Galleries. New York, New York, 2013.

Articles & reviews

  • "New Talent in the U.S.A.," Art in America, March 1957.
  • "Pop," Das Kunstwerk vol. 17, No.10, 1964.
  • "Idelle Weber," New York Herald Tribune, May 30, 1964.
  • Dore Ashton. "New York Commentary," Studio International no. 856, April, 1965, p. 168.
  • "Idelle Weber," Arts Magazine, September, 1975.
  • Linda Chase. "Photorealism: Post Modernist Illusionism," Art International, March/April 1976.
  • John Perreault. "Photo Shock," SoHo Weekly News, January 22, 1976.
  • Lorraine Gilligan. "Idelle Weber," Womanart no. 1, Fall 1977, p. XX.
  • Ellen Lubell. "Idelle Weber," Arts Magazine, September 1977.
  • William Zimmer. "Idelle Weber," Arts Magazine, June 1979.
  • William Zimmer. "Idelle Weber," Arts Magazine, October 1982, p. 19.
  • William Zimmer. "Idelle Weber," Arts Magazine, October 1983, p. 2.
  • "Idelle Weber at O.K. Harris," Art in America, February 1983, pp. 132–3.
  • Joan Marter. "Idelle Weber" Arts Magazine, November 1985, p. 123.
  • John Russell. "Idelle Weber," New York Times, April 20, 1984.
  • Paula Span. "Making a Business Out of Art for the Office," The Wall Street Journal, July 11, 1985, p. 22.
  • Stephen Westfall. "Idelle Weber," Arts Magazine, March 1986, p. 129.
  • Helen Ferrulli. "Pop Went Their Easels: How Industry Transformed the Art of the 60s and 70s," Arts and Entertainment Magazine, June 1991, p. 10.
  • Holland Cotter. "Art in Review, An Uncommon Line," New York Times, July 30, 1993, p. C26.
  • Valerie Steiker. The New Yorker, March 1994.
  • Edith Newhall. ARTnews, Summer 1994.
  • Grace Glueck. "Idelle Weber," New York Times, October 18, 1996, p. C1.
  • Ann Landi. "Who Hails From Hopper?" ARTnews, April 1998.
  • Helen A. Harrison. "Head Room," New York Times, June 21, 2004.
  • Holland Cotter. "Idelle Weber: The Pop Years", The New York Times, April 18, 2013.
  • Doug McClemont. "Idelle Weber", Artnews, September 2013, p. 98.

References

  1. ^ a b c Steinhauer, Jillian (April 7, 2020). "Idelle Weber, Who Stretched the Meaning of Pop Art, Dies at 88". The New York Times. Retrieved April 7, 2020.
  2. ^
    ISBN 9780988913905
    . Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  3. ^ "Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  4. ^ Cummings, Paul (1993). "Idelle Weber Talks with Paul Cummings". Drawing. xv (4): 80.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g "Idelle Weber: Chronology," Artist Works Catalogue, artnet.
  6. ^ "Singular Impressions: Contemporary Monotype Phenomenon". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  7. ^ Cooper, Ashton. "Chrysler Museum Acquires Original "Mad Men" Painting by Neglected Pop Artist Idelle Weber"". Blouin ArtInfo. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  8. ^ "Chrysler Museum Acquires Three Works by Idelle Weber". Chrysler Museum. 2013-09-03. Retrieved 8 March 2015.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Idelle_Weber&oldid=1211343120"