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JENNIFER BARTLETT (b. 1941)
17 White Street
baked enamel and silkscreen grid on 81 enamel steel plates
116 by 116 in. 294.6 by 294.6 cm.
Painted in 1977.
Bartlett began using steel plates as the basic component for her painting in 1968, prefering the simplicity and uniformity of these elements to the complexities of wooden stretchers and canvas. Bartlett used one-foot-square steel plates coated with white baked enamel. Gray grids were silkscreened on each and the artist used Testor enamel paints which come in twenty-five bright colors.
17 White Street is one in a series of house paintings which were begun following the artist's seminal exhibition of Rhapsody, the monumental 1975-76 work of 988 plates that established the artist's career. The house paintings were each a portrait of a friend or a famous person. This painting is named for Bartlett's friend and
fellow artist, Elizabeth Murray, who lived at this address. Bartlett "used all
twenty-five of the Testor colors, to suggest the kind of 'contained chaos' that
she associated with her friend" (Marge Goldwater, p. 30).
PROVENANCE
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Charles Saatchi, London (acquired from the above in 1978)
Sotheby's, New York, April 30, 1991, Lot 55
Acquired by the present owner from the above
EXHIBITED
Paris, MusEe d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Baroque '81, 1981, illustrated in color on the cover
Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum of Art; La Jolla, Museum of Contemporary Art; Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Jennifer Bartlett, 1985-1986
Sunderland, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Jennifer Bartlett: Boats, Streets and Water, 1987
LITERATURE
Prudence Carlson, et. al, Art of Our Time: the Saatchi Collection, Vol. 4, London, 1984, pl. 1, illustrated in color
Marge Goldwater, Roberta Smith, Calvin Tomkins, Jennifer Bartlett, New York, 1985, p. 2, frontispiece, illustrated in color