The WOW Report

  • WOW Report
  • About
  • RuPaul’s Drag Race Live!
  • WOW Presents Plus
  • What to Watch
  • Store
You are here: Home / Misc / #RIP: World-Class Art Critic, Curator, Barbara Rose (with a Personal Remembrance)

#RIP: World-Class Art Critic, Curator, Barbara Rose (with a Personal Remembrance)

By Trey Speegle on December 28, 2020 9:24 am

Barbara Rose, a majorly influential art critic and curator, has died.

Rose had been suffering from cancer.

Her defining piece of writing is ABC Art, appeared in a 1965 issue of Art in America. In it she tries pinpoint a new artistic trend.

Identifying a push toward coldness and irony, Rose wrote,

“If, on seeing some of the new paintings, sculptures, dances or films, you are bored, probably you were intended to be. Boring the public is one way of testing its commitment.”

Some have claimed that Rose’s essay helped usher in Minimalism, the style now associated most closely with Judd, Dan Flavin, Richard Serra, Carl Andre, and others.

Rose told Artforum in 2016,

“The only thing anybody knows about me is that I wrote that article with the title I didn’t give it, which was ‘ABC Art,’ and then everybody insisted that I invented Minimal art.

Well, that is seriously wrong. I don’t invent art movements. I just notice coincidences, and those coincidences began to make sense to me as a worldview, which the Germans call weltanschauung.”

Barbara Rose was born in 1936 in Washington, D.C. She attended Smith College for her undergraduate degree and later received a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University.

She was married several times, once to artist Frank Stella in 1961. She divorced in 1969.

According to Artnews,

At one point in her career, Rose’s ambitions took her into the museum world. In 1981, she was appointed curator of exhibitions and collections and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Her time in that role came with a few lauded shows,

Another notable show was one devoted to a so-called Houston School of rising Texan painters; that exhibition went to the P.S. 1 in Queens, New York, as well. But her position at the MFA was not without controversy.

Enter this young man, yours truly, into New York publishing in the early 80s. At the age of 21, having come from Texas as the art director of art scion Francois deMenil‘s Houston City Magazine, I found myself at Vanity Fair (via Vogue) just as it was relaunched in 1983.

I was a designer in the art department and Alexander Liberman took a great interest in the magazine’s content, as he had at Vogue, as the editorial director of Condé Nast. On the weekends, he was an artist, one of note, not just the weekend kind.

Under the editorship of Leo Lerman, the bent of Vanity Fair, before Tina Brown brought in celebrity as the focus, was the arts. (Philip Roth didn’t exactly break newsstand sales records.)

Luis Buneul’s new autobiography, My Last Sign was being excerpted and the photo dept. had called in virtually every major surrealist piece of art that was to be had.

Mr. Liberman would come to the art department and it was my job to assist him designing layouts by having at the ready black and white photostats of all of the said artwork, from 2 x 3″ up to a double page spread. These layouts were really collages with text headlines and captions dummied in.

Barbara Rose was there as well. She was to write the introduction to the article featuring Bunuel’s book. There were several layout sessions that went on for hours with Liberman and Rose bantering back and forth with art history short-hand asides about what art to include, and exclude, with anecdotes and juicy gossip about all those involved. (The surrealists were an incestuous bunch.)

And I was witness (and participant) in this master class of surrealist art history. To see and hear these two, politely, sometimes heatedly, go back and forth was thrilling. I cannot recall specifically what was said, as I was trying to keep up and put my fingers on any asked for image and makes notes of what was missing.

I used to be asked where I went to school. Then, and now, I answer,

“I went to Condé Nast.”

What an education. And I got paid (not much) but I didn’t go into debt.

In 2018, Rose appeared in the HBO documentary The Price of Everything, In it she says of the art market’s rapid ascent over the past half-century,

“It’s sick.”

What would the surrealists have said?

Barbara Rose was 84.

(via ArtNews)

Show the love:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Misc

More

#QWERRRKOUT Tuesday: Beauty Brand & Makeup   Artist Kardi Blac

#QWERRRKOUT Tuesday: Beauty Brand & Makeup Artist Kardi Blac

by Paisley Dalton on February 7, 2023 9:48 am

ABBA! Nick Offerman! Murray Bartlett! David Bowie! The WOW Report for Radio Andy!

ABBA! Nick Offerman! Murray Bartlett! David Bowie! The WOW Report for Radio Andy!

by Blake Jacobs on February 3, 2023 11:00 am

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Trending


#TikTokTrend: Madonna Dancing to Gaga’s ‘Bloody Mary’ Has Fans Kinda Freaking TF Out –Watch

Monét X Change & Bob the Drag Queen Launch New Line, BOMO Beauty

#Grammys23: Watch Sam Smith, Kim Petras, Violet Chachki & Gotmik Slay with ‘Unholy’ Style

‘DailyShow’ Guest Host Chelsea Handler Reads “Moron” MTG & “Unstable” George Santos –Watch

Madonna Addresses the Haters After Her Grammy Appearance –”Bow Down Bitches!”

About

From the creators of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Party Monster, Million Dollar Listing, RuPaul's Drag Race, I Am Britney Jean, Big Freedia, and more.

Adam Joseph Reimagines Loosey LaDuca’s Talent Show Track “Let Loose”- Listen
Schiaperrelli! Madonna! Tom Hanks! Kylies Minogue & Jenner! The WOW Report for Radio Andy
Madonna! Joanna Lumley! Edgar Allan Poe! Jennifers Lopez AND Coolidge! The WOW Report for Radio Andy!
Prince Harry! Jennifer Coolidge! M3GAN! Jordan Peele! Randy Joins Us for the WOW Report for Radio Andy!
Rest in Perfection Barbara Walters and Anita Pointer! The WOW Report for Radio Andy!

© 2021 World of Wonder Productions, Inc | World of Wonder is a trademark of World of Wonder Productions, Inc | Privacy

Copyright © 2023 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in