Synopses & Reviews
With a quiet but resolute courage, Richard Tuttle (born 1941) has singlehandedly reinvented sculpture after Minimalism. Shrugging off the machismo of most American sculpture being made in the early 1960s, Tuttle created an arena for new possibilities of scale and humor, sometimes adding almost nothing to an object, at other times heaping materials up recklessly or pressing them to the brink of compositional incoherence. Tuttle can thus be said to have introduced a kind of new sensitivity to materials and application of paint to surface--one that brings the artist's proprioceptive body and the materials at hand into an equivalent calibration. Triumphs was published for Tuttle's winter 2010 show at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, which was arranged in two parts: one of recent work selected and installed by the artist, the other of earlier work curated by Barbara Dawson and Michael Dempsey. Because the act of installation (or re-installation) produces creative variables for Tuttle's work--his famous wire drawings of the early 70s, for example, are made anew each time they are installed--and also because of the particular architectural character of The Hugh Lane documentation of installations of older works is included, alongside Tuttle's fascinating prose meditation on the exhibition, in which the gently revolutionary character of his thought is made plain.
Synopsis
I Donandrsquo;t Know . The Weave of Textile Language is a unique project by the renowned American artist Richard Tuttle (b. 1941). Tuttle, who came to prominence in the 1960s, is revered for his delicate and playful approach, often using such humble, everyday materials as cloth, paper, rope, and plywood. Drawing on Tuttleandrsquo;s knowledge as a longstanding collector of textiles from around the world, the book investigates the importance of the material throughout history, across Tuttleandrsquo;s remarkable body of work, and into the latest developments in his practice. Included are photographs of Tuttleandrsquo;s collection; essays about the historical, aesthetic, social, and material value of textiles; images of works from a recent Whitechapel Gallery exhibition; and documentation of his newly commissioned sculpture in Tate Modernandrsquo;s Turbine Hall.
About the Author
Richard Tuttle is a vital force in the development of conceptualism and postminimalism. He lives and works in Mount Desert, Maine; Abiquiu, New Mexico, and New York City. Achim Borchardt-Hume is head of exhibitions at Tate Modern, London. Magnus af Petersens is chief curator at Whitechapel Gallery, London.