GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Composed of stenciled letters broken arbitrarily, Christopher Wool's Untitled plays on the use of words and letters to create a sense of disorder and chaos, not only through what they say, but in the way they are arranged on the canvas. Because Wool's words are not readily decipherable, the viewer experiences a sense of confusion, eventually accepting the words as an abstract collection of letters. The text is further distanced from us by its disregard for traditional hyphenation and grammar. This exacting painting tests perception as well as analysis, making us aware of how difficult it can be to understand even something as familiar as our own language. Once decoded, however, it packs an ironic, even darkly humorous, punch. This "text painting" is quoted from a definition of nihilism in Raoul Vaneigem's 1967 The Revolution of Everyday Life.
Wool was inspired to create his text paintings after seeing black graffiti scrawled on a white van outside his studio. Struck by the effect of this simple gesture, he began making words the content of his work. Unevenly spaced and awkwardly arranged according to the limits of the canvas, the stenciled letters read as both an image and a broken narrative.
From the inception of his career in the 1980s, Wool has created a major body of work that fearlessly interrogates the mechanics of how we read and, perhaps more often, misread the world around us via language, pattern, and symbol. Filtered through the painting traditions of American abstract expressionism, the power of black on white signs found in urban streetscapes, and the improvisational anarchy of avant-garde cultural movements both historical and recent, Wool's work has made a major contribution to contemporary art practice and our understanding of what painting can achieve in the present day.
Adapted from
Charles Wylie, Label text, Re-Seeing the Contemporary: Selected from the Collection, 2010.
NOTES
acquisition justification:
Christopher Wool is the most important young American painter in a generation of object makers. His artistic colleagues include Robert Gober, Jeff Koons, Mike Kelley and Richard Prince. Their work is influenced by popular culture, and has an ironic, and at times even nihilistic bent in form as well as content.
Wool was born in Chicago in 1955. After studying at Sarah Lawrence (1973), The New York Studio School (1974) and New York University (1978), he began making Pollock-inspired drip paintings in 1985. However, instead of incorporating gesture, Wool used three to five black-and-white dots and applied them mechanically to a metal surface. The resulting all-over pattern is an image that recalls a starry night, as well as old-fashioned enamelware. As with all good contemporary art, the works question their own meanings in the sense that they appear to be meaningless.
Wool began making word paintings in 1988. These paintings play on the use of words and images in contemporary art and, in fact, Wool's words become the image. The words tend to create a sense of disorder and chaos, not only through what they say, but in the way they are placed on the support. Because Wool's words are not readily decipherable, the viewer experiences a sense of confusion; the normal functioning of the sense is being tampered with.
Once the words are understood, it is next up to the viewer to figure out what they mean. A key to this can be knowing the source from which the works came. In the past Wool has used quotes from sources as diverse as the film "Apocolypse Now" and the book "Helter Skelter". An example of this is another "Untitled" work from 1988 which reads: FLOAT LIKE BUTTERFLY STING LIKE BEE. The artist uses this interpretation of a quote made famous by Mohammed Ali to ridicule the violent ritual of boxing in modern society and expose the effect it has had on Ali and his speech patterns.
Wool's word paintings, like his earlier works have an all-over effect similar to works by Jackson Pollock, such as "Cathedral." His use of stencils is reminiscent of works by Jasper Johns, such as "Device". For both artists this technique downplays the sense of personal involvement in the painting.
The importance of including this painting in the DMA's collection cannot be overstated. "Untitled" has its sources in the works of the Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s, the Pop Art of the 1960s, the Conceptual Art of the 1970s and 1980s; all of which are represented in the Museum's collection. Works such as "Perfect Door" by Bruce Nauman, and "I am a Man" by Jenny Holzer are the direct precursors of art from the current generation which has so far been unrepresented.
Among the honors Christopher Wool has received were his inclusion in the 1989 Whitney Biennial, and one-man exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
Charles Wylie, 2004
- Broken arbitrarily, without regard for syllables, this text is hard to read, encouraging the viewer to see the words first as an abstract collection of letters. Just as we begin to find satisfaction in deciphering the code, the bottom falls out and a whole new field of meaning opens up. Christopher Wool's "text painting" is quoted from a definition of nihilism in Raoul Vaneigem's 1967 The Revolution of Everyday Life.
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Until 1991: Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
From 1991: Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Friends of Contemporary Art
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- Guggenheim~Read more about Christopher Wool's text paintings.
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General Description
Composed of stenciled letters broken arbitrarily, Christopher Wool's Untitled plays on the use of words and letters to create a sense of disorder and chaos, not only through what they say, but in the way they are arranged on the canvas. Because Wool's words are not readily decipherable, the viewer experiences a sense of confusion, eventually accepting the words as an abstract collection of letters. The text is further distanced from us by its disregard for traditional hyphenation and grammar. This exacting painting tests perception as well as analysis, making us aware of how difficult it can be to understand even something as familiar as our own language. Once decoded, however, it packs an ironic, even darkly humorous, punch. This "text painting" is quoted from a definition of nihilism in Raoul Vaneigem's 1967 The Revolution of Everyday Life.
Wool was inspired to create his text paintings after seeing black graffiti scrawled on a white van outside his studio. Struck by the effect of this simple gesture, he began making words the content of his work. Unevenly spaced and awkwardly arranged according to the limits of the canvas, the stenciled letters read as both an image and a broken narrative.
From the inception of his career in the 1980s, Wool has created a major body of work that fearlessly interrogates the mechanics of how we read and, perhaps more often, misread the world around us via language, pattern, and symbol. Filtered through the painting traditions of American abstract expressionism, the power of black on white signs found in urban streetscapes, and the improvisational anarchy of avant-garde cultural movements both historical and recent, Wool's work has made a major contribution to contemporary art practice and our understanding of what painting can achieve in the present day.
Adapted from
Charles Wylie, Label text, Re-Seeing the Contemporary: Selected from the Collection, 2010.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
Notes
acquisition justification:
Christopher Wool is the most important young American painter in a generation of object makers. His artistic colleagues include Robert Gober, Jeff Koons, Mike Kelley and Richard Prince. Their work is influenced by popular culture, and has an ironic, and at times even nihilistic bent in form as well as content.
Wool was born in Chicago in 1955. After studying at Sarah Lawrence (1973), The New York Studio School (1974) and New York University (1978), he began making Pollock-inspired drip paintings in 1985. However, instead of incorporating gesture, Wool used three to five black-and-white dots and applied them mechanically to a metal surface. The resulting all-over pattern is an image that recalls a starry night, as well as old-fashioned enamelware. As with all good contemporary art, the works question their own meanings in the sense that they appear to be meaningless.
Wool began making word paintings in 1988. These paintings play on the use of words and images in contemporary art and, in fact, Wool's words become the image. The words tend to create a sense of disorder and chaos, not only through what they say, but in the way they are placed on the support. Because Wool's words are not readily decipherable, the viewer experiences a sense of confusion; the normal functioning of the sense is being tampered with.
Once the words are understood, it is next up to the viewer to figure out what they mean. A key to this can be knowing the source from which the works came. In the past Wool has used quotes from sources as diverse as the film "Apocolypse Now" and the book "Helter Skelter". An example of this is another "Untitled" work from 1988 which reads: FLOAT LIKE BUTTERFLY STING LIKE BEE. The artist uses this interpretation of a quote made famous by Mohammed Ali to ridicule the violent ritual of boxing in modern society and expose the effect it has had on Ali and his speech patterns.
Wool's word paintings, like his earlier works have an all-over effect similar to works by Jackson Pollock, such as "Cathedral." His use of stencils is reminiscent of works by Jasper Johns, such as "Device". For both artists this technique downplays the sense of personal involvement in the painting.
The importance of including this painting in the DMA's collection cannot be overstated. "Untitled" has its sources in the works of the Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s, the Pop Art of the 1960s, the Conceptual Art of the 1970s and 1980s; all of which are represented in the Museum's collection. Works such as "Perfect Door" by Bruce Nauman, and "I am a Man" by Jenny Holzer are the direct precursors of art from the current generation which has so far been unrepresented.
Among the honors Christopher Wool has received were his inclusion in the 1989 Whitney Biennial, and one-man exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
Charles Wylie, 2004
- Broken arbitrarily, without regard for syllables, this text is hard to read, encouraging the viewer to see the words first as an abstract collection of letters. Just as we begin to find satisfaction in deciphering the code, the bottom falls out and a whole new field of meaning opens up. Christopher Wool's "text painting" is quoted from a definition of nihilism in Raoul Vaneigem's 1967 The Revolution of Everyday Life.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
Until 1991: Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
From 1991: Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Friends of Contemporary Art
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