Rackstraw Downes Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008
Klaus Ottmann
Published by GILES in association with Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York
Publish Date — June 2010 (UK and USA)
Dimensions — 112 pages, 240 x 280 mm (11 x 9 ½ in.), landscape
Illustrations — 44 colour
Hardback price — UK£24.95/US$39.95
ISBN — 1-904832-73-3
ISBN — 978-1-904832-73-7
Book Details (pdf) — Parrish-Downes-AI-LR.pdf
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Press Release — Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings 1972–2008...
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“Through essays, an interview, and a host of full-page images, Downes emerges as an astute observer, quietly and powerfully documenting the surrounding reality of modern life that goes unnoticed by most.” Alyssa Payley, ARTINFO.com
Publication accompanies an exhibition at Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, June 20 – August 8, 2010; Portland Museum of Art, Maine, December 16, 2010 - March 20, 2011; Weatherspoon Art Museum of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, May 28, 2011 - August 21, 2011
About the Book
Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008 is an important overview of the work and methods of this British-born ‘realist’ panoramic painter (b. 1939) who was given the MacArthur Fellowship genius award in 2009. Though primarily based in New York City, Downes has travelled widely and has created a significant number of landscape paintings on site including the harbour of Portland, Maine, and the Donald Judd structures in Marfa, Texas.
Downes’s panoramic paintings, which he developed by studying seventeenth-century Dutch panoramic landscape painting possess a unique balance between realism and abstraction, timelessness and history. Painted from observation, they are not "snapshots" of a scene recreated in the studio; rather, they are chronicles of the human experience— records of social history as it evolves.
The book also features a wide-ranging interview between the artist and Terrie Sultan, director of Parrish Art Museum
