Stuart Netsky
Exhibition Project:
Rothko's No. 7 (Black on Dark Maroon)/Blanket, 2000
(knitted acrylic, 84" x 67")
Stuart Netsky exhibited a soft, knitted version of one of Mark Rothko's dark late paintings (the original, from 1964, is in the Rothko Chapel, Houston). Netsky has created his own versions of paintings by Barnett Newman, Seurat, Cezanne and Rothko before this. The piece lay casually draped, like a throw rug, over an adirondack chair in the Barn Studio, offering suggestions of rest and protection. For Netsky, reengaging with Rothko's work brought him a greater appreciation for its intimate and enveloping qualities, which is echoed in the form of the blanket. This dark work hints at the solace that reenactment can offer, in its patterns of return to familiar touchstones in a changing world.
Stuart Netsky has created sly remakes of some of art history's great works, from a Rothko
painting redone as a knitted afghan, to a detail from Seurat's La Grande Jatte executed
in billboard reflector buttons. His soft versions of works by Rothko, Barnett Newman,
Paul Cezanne, Richard Serra and Walter de Maria substitute a subversive "domesticism"
for the heroicism of art-historical tradition. Netsky has also created sculptural works
cast in marshallow, AZT and vitamins, in the form of Classical sculpture fragments; and
abstract paintings executed in nail polish and lipstick. A 1995 Pew Fellowship winner, Netsky has had solo shows at
Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art and Larry Becker Contemporary
Art, and most recently at Richard Anderson Fine Arts in New York (2000).