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...

News — Rackstraw Downes to move to Weatherspoon Art...

— Rackstraw Downes exhibition to move to Portland...

Sales Points

“This excellent book ... will surely help Downes find a receptive audience who will marvel at his balance of realism and abstraction, timelessness and history, and will embrace the work of a plein-air master of our time”. Maine Antique Digest

“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

“This catalog is recommended for libraries focusing on American or modern art.” Doug Litts, ARLIS (Art Libraries Society of North America)

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 17th-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

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 Author(s)

Klaus Ottmann is Robert Lehman Curator at Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, and an independent curator and scholar. He is the author of, most recently, Yves Klein: Works, Writings, Interviews (2010) and Thought Through My Eyes: Writings on Art, 1977–2005 (2006). Sarah Rothenberg is an internationally acclaimed solo and chamber pianist and has served as artistic director of Da Camera, Houston since 1994. She is a frequent performer on Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series in New York. Terrie Sultan is Director of Parrish Art Museum. She was director and chief curator of Blaffer Gallery from 2000–8, and curator of contemporary at the Corcoran Gallery of Art from 1988-2000.