ARTSCHWAGER, RICHARD
1924 Washington - 2013 Albany/N.Y.

Title: Portrait 1.
Subtitle: 2 parts.
Date: 1962.
Technique: Wooden chest of drawers and framed acrylic work.
Measurement: Chest of drawers: 120 x 76,5 x 41cm, frames: 76 x 70 x 31cm.
Notation: Titled, signed and dated. On the chest of drawers verso: Portrait Artschwager '62.


Provenance:
- Kasper König Collection, Berlin (directly from artist)

Exhibitions:
- Kunstverein Hamburg (label verso)
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 1974
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 1988
- Haus der Kunst, Munic 2013/14
- Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen 2016
- Museo di arte moderna e contemporenea die Trento e Rovereto, 2019/20
- Guggenheim Bilbao, 2020

Literature:
- Ausst.-Kat. American Pop Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, London 1974, Kat.-Nr. 18, S. 27, Abb.
- Ausst.-Kat. Artschwager, Richard, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 1988, Nr. 7, S. 52, Abb.
- exhib. cat. Richard Artschwager, Whitney Museum of American Art/Hammer Museum, New York 2012, p. 110, ill.
- exhib. cat. Aufschlussreiche Räume, Interieur als Porträt, Museum Morsbroich, Cologne 2016, p. 6, ill.
- exhib. cat. Richard Artschwager Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea die Trento e Rovereto/Guggenheim Bilbao, Milan 2019,cat. no. 106, p. 82, ill.

The origin of the creative direction
The beginning of the creative exploration of sculpture and painting in Richard Artschwager's work was established in 1962 with the work "Portrait I". As the origin of a new phase in Artschwager's oeuvre, the work combines an ordinary bedroom chest of drawers with a framed painting showing a portrait of a man. Titled the first in the series, this work marks the beginning of Artschwager's own aesthetic, which defined him until his death in 2013.

Combination of everyday and artistic aspects
"Portrait I" unites Artschwager's new artistic direction with his profession as a carpenter and furniture maker. Since the early 1960s, Artschwager has been painting with acrylic on Celotex panels, which, with their irregular surface, are used for insulating houses, but in combination with paint create an aesthetic of handmade paper. At the beginning, Artschwager chose photographic models of architecture as his subject, but quickly switched to portraits, such as "Baby" in 1962. This is followed by the piece of furniture with five drawers on small castors, whose gray coated grain - similar to a grisaille - contradictorily offsets the wooden materiality - the painted portrait becomes an object, the commode becomes a painting.

New paths
Throughout his career, Artschwager repeatedly painted portraits with the framed Celotex panels - of the art dealer Holly Solomon in "Portrait of Holly", 1967-68 in the Fischer Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art or the then American president "Geo. W. Bush", 2002 in the Yale University Art Gallery. The combination of framed portrait and chest of drawers was continued a year later in "Portrait II" from 1963, now also in Yale. Here Artschwager uses the material Formica, a laminate. The two elements, portrait and chest of drawers, are now united in a brown frame, divided by yellow surfaces and lines, and are only related to their predecessor in terms of their structure.