Synopsis "Joe Zucker (in English)"
The first comprehensive monograph on the art of Joe ZuckerJoe Zucker has flown under the radar of larger public awareness due to the frequent transformations in his art from one style to another, and thus his work has not been easily characterized and identified. Nevertheless, he has forged a powerful artistic persona as a process artist with a certain pop inflection, who not only grapples with formal and theoretical concerns but also explores themes of history, culture and Americana. This career-spanning survey deals with all of Joe Zucker’s various bodies of work, from his grid paintings of the 1960s to his latest pieces, including the monumental 1000 Brushstrokes (2015–1016). Zucker’s art is rooted in a conceptual framework where tools, materials, processes, procedures, content and subject matter are all interrelated. Working with materials ranging from cotton balls, sash cord, peg board and squeegees to acrylic and rhoplex, and exploring such themes as the grid, the history of cotton, ancient civilizations, an assortment of ‘dubious characters’, paintings that paint themselves, as well as meditations on the studio, Zucker merges materials, process and content – abstract and otherwise – to produce compelling works of extraordinary inventiveness, irony and passion. Table of ContentsThree Sides of Joe Zucker, and his Homemade Aesthetics • Image and Surface: Joe Zucker’sPainterly Approach to Process, Alex Bacon • In the Land of Cotton: Look Away, Look Away• The Ancient World – Artchaic • ‘Grid Lock’, or A Bad Case of the Grids • DubiousCharacters • Fish and Fowl, Feather and Scale • The Seven Seas: First the Tide Rushes inand Plants a Kiss on the Shore then Rolls… Out to Sea… • Let’s Get Ready to Rumble •The American Heartland: Willa Catherized • Process: Paintings as Tools That Help MakeThemselves • Views From The Houses of Pain and Pleasure! • Painting as [re]Model: JoeZucker’s 100-foot-long Piece Says It’s Time For Change Again, Terry R. Myers • Phong Bui Interview
