Terry Adkins
(b. 1953, Washington, D.C., d. 2014, Brooklyn, New York)
Progressive Nature Studies (Portfolio)
Date2013
Medium21 inkjet prints on pulled press paper
DimensionsUnframed (Each): 13 1/4 x 10 1/4 in. (33.7 x 26 cm)
Framed (Each): 17 1/4 x 14 1/4 in. (43.8 x 36.2 cm)
Installed: 55 3/4 x 120 3/4 in. (141.6 x 306.7 cm)
Other (Portfolio): 1 x 15 x 12 cm, (3/8 x 5 7/8 x 4 3/4 in.,)
Credit LineMarieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
Object numberR2024.7
ClassificationsMultiple
Not on view
DescriptionGeorge Washington Carver was one of the world’s most revered agricultural chemists and inventors, and also made significant artistic advances. Carver’s color experiments culminated in the manufacture of numerous paints, dyes and pigments extracted from minerals in the soil of Alabama. Notable among them is the 1935 creation Dr. Carver’s Egyptian Blue 9th Oxidation, which matches a hue found only on certain artifacts in the tomb of Tutankhamen and is markedly similar to International Klein Blue.It is known that in 1893 Carver won an honorable mention at the Chicago World’s Fair for his botanical painting, Yuca and Cactus, and he can also be considered an abstract artist. In Adkins’s estimation, Carver was the first artist to paint completely abstractly, decades before Wassily Kandinsky or Arthur Dove.
Adkins’s Progressive Nature Studies portfolio imagines what Carver’s abstract paintings might have looked like. Taking inspiration from Yves Klein’s folio of multicolored monochromes, Peintures (1954) Adkins transformed the reverse side of found stereo cards in his own collection into vertical “painting oxidations” presented in pairs on eighteen sheets of paper. Klein’s color swatches were named after cities, and Adkins’s follows suit, titling each of Carver’s monochromes after a city in the United States that has named an institution after the late chemist and inventor. For example, Upperville, VA is assigned to a vibrant turquoise, and juxtaposed with a burnt orange named after Tupelo, MI.
In Adkins’s own words, the Progressive Nature Studies portfolio aims “to uphold the unheralded impact of Carver’s artistic heritage and to reinsert his legacy to its rightful place within the tapestry of human culture.”
(Paula Cooper Gallery)
