Untitled

• Date:not dated
• Type:

  print

• Medium:

  serigraph

• Size:

  31 in. x 25 in. (78.74 cm x 63.5 cm)

• Credit:

  Gift of the Albert & Vera List Collection

Zucker studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received a MFA in 1966.  He now lives and works in New York City. Joseph Zucker's work grew out of the Minimalist desire for the most literal possible artistic presentation.  His "woven" paintings of the 1960's constituted an exploration of the relationship between the subject of the painting and the structure of the canvas on which it was painted. In the early 1970's, Zucker began to use cotton balls as paint, by coloring, stretching, and sticking them onto a stretched canvas.  On one level they were an even more literal reference to the nature of the cotton canvas itself.  This intention, shared by many Minimalists, stemmed from a desire to negate the Abstract Expressionist position that art was an exercise in pure subjectivity.  The cotton ball paintings, for which Zucker became quite well-known, also were a part of a larger interest among artists in the 1970's in the relationship between art and mass-produced goods and technology.  In this respect, Zucker's use of cotton balls parallels Roy Lichtenstein's parodies of the comic book aesthetic. Zucker's work in the eighties has consisted of rope-grid paintings, wherein he lays colored rope onto canvas in a grid formation and then creates out of this assemblage of rope rectangles cartoon silhouettes of such themes as the execution of Captain Kidd or a calmly drifting square-rigger. Zucker's career as a whole speaks to a long-time fascination with what he calls "kitschy craft practices."  The cotton ball paintings are reminiscent of parade floats and the rope-grid paintings suggest simple "make it yourself" home craft kits.  They raise the serious aesthetic issues of decoration, illusionism, and the role of craftsmanship in the fine arts, but at the same time are never devoid of humor.  Zucker desires the viewer to have an ultimately sensual relationship with his art:  "I want people to feel the paintings with their eyes, to have a very tactile relationship to that object."