Brochure relating to an exhibition, 2013
Published by: Spanierman Modern
Year published: 2013
Unpaginated.

Significant full colour folded brochure for an exhibition of Paintings, 1967 - 2012 by Frank Bowling, O.B.E., RA, held at Spanierman Modern, New York. The exhibition consisted for paintings drawn from a substantial period of Bowling’s ongoing career, with work produced between 1967 and 2012. The exhibition brochure featured an essay by Courtney J Martin. Within the essay, Martin took the reader through different periods of Bowling’s practice, citing influences as well as offering descriptions of both the paintings themselves and the various processes used in the making of them. For example, “During this period Bowling began what is now known as his map series, a suite of paintings that feature outlines of geographic spaces. Completed the year of his Guggenheim Fellowship, Bartica Born and False Start are representative of this series wherein figuration is reduced to the symbolic, compositional gesture of the stencil. Kobena Mercer has written convincingly that the map paintings were a sign of Bowling’s transition from “figurative painting to post-painterly abstraction,” one of the last Greenberg terms for proficient abstract painting. The outline of South America and the other continents that made their way into the map paintings are, like the paint in the rest of these compositions, without spatial depth.”

Catalogue contents as follows:

Front cover: Upright 2012 acrylic on canvas 74 x 53 in.

Inside cover: exhibition detaiuls, plus plate of Made at Maclise 1982 acrylic on canvas 83 x 68 3/8 in.

Catalogue essay by Courtney J. Martin, including plates of False Start c. 1967 acrylic on canvas 63 3/4 x 51 in and Carriage 2006 acrlic on canvas 24 x 41 in.

Full page plate of Lenora Seas 1976 acrylic on canvas 87 x 47 1/2 in.

Edited biographical information and artist’s CV.

The exhibition brochure came with a small folded invitation to the Opening Reception, printed on translucent paper, and folded over the cover of the catalogue, when it was mailed out by Spanierman Modern Gallery.