Dike Blair (born 1952) is a New York-based artist, writer and teacher.Princenthal, Nancy. "Dike Blair," ''Art in America'', May 2002, p. 148–9.Rian, Jeff. "Dike Blair, New York, New York," ''Apartamento'', 2011, p. 194–207. His art consists of two parallel bodies of work: intimate, photorealistic paintings and installation-like sculptures assembled from common objects—often exhibited together—which examine overlooked and unexceptional phenomena of daily existence in both a romantic and ironic manner.Richard, Frances
"Dike Blair,"
''Artforum'', March 2007, p. 315. Retrieved November 17, 2020.Schjeldahl, Peter
"Dike Blair,"
''The New Yorker'', December 2018. Retrieved November 17, 2020.Wilk, Deborah. "Dike Blair," ''Modern Painters'', September 2013, p. 110. Blair emerged out of the late 1970s New York art scene, and his work relates to concurrent movements such as the

Pictures Generation ''The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984'' was an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City that ran from April 29 – August 2, 2009. The exhibition took its name from ''Pictures'', a 1977 group show organized by art h ...

Minimalism In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

and

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

, while remaining distinct from and tangential to them.Smith, Roberta
"Dike Blair,"
''The New York Times'', November 2, 2001, p. E40. Retrieved November 17, 2020.Knight, Christopher

''Los Angeles Times'', May 18, 2001, p. F16. Retrieved November 17, 2020. ''New York Times'' critic

Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position. Early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied at ...

places his sculpture in a "blurred category" crossing "

Carl Andre Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures and for the suspected murder of contemporary and wife, Ana Mendieta. His sculptures range from large public art ...

with

ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arrangement. It is also known as . The tradition dates back to Heian period, when floral offerings were made at altars. Later, flower arrangements were instead used to adorn the (alcove) of a traditional Japan ...

, formalist abstraction with sleek anonymous hotel rooms, talk-show sets with home furnishings showrooms." Cameron Martin writes in ''Artforum'' that the paintings are "rendered with a lucidity that extracts something metaphysical from the mundane."Martin, Cameron
"Dike Blair,"
''Artforum'', May 2010, p. 242–3. Retrieved November 17, 2020. Blair's work has been shown at the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...

Secession Secession is the withdrawal of a group from a larger entity, especially a political entity, but also from any organization, union or military alliance. Some of the most famous and significant secessions have been: the former Soviet republics le ...

(Vienna),

Weatherspoon Art Museum The Weatherspoon Art Museum is located at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in the southeast with a focus on American art. Its programming includes fifteen or more e ...

Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ori ...

, and

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

; Griffin, Tim
"Tim Griffin talks with the curators of the 2004 Whitney Biennial,"
''Artforum'', January 2004, p. 57–9. Retrieved November 18, 2020.Abramovich, Alex. "Termite Art and the Modern Museum," ''The New Yorker'', February 28, 2019.Leguillon, Pierre. "Purple Horizon," ''Beaux Arts'', July 2000, p. 40. it belongs to the collections of the Whitney,

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, and

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

, among others.Whitney Museum of American Art
"Dike Blair,"
Artists. Retrieved November 20, 2020.Brooklyn Museum
''Lotus and Robot'', Dike Blair
Collection. Retrieved November 20, 2020. He received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 2009 and the Rome Prize from the

American Academy in Rome The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome. The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. History In 1893, a group of American architects, ...

in 2010.''Artforum''
"Guggenheim Fellows Announced,"
News, April 10, 2009. Retrieved November 18, 2020.American Academy in Rome
"The “Glimpse” Series: Dike Blair Contemplates Japan While in Rome,"
News. March 1, 2011. Retrieved November 20, 2020. He lives in New York with his wife, costume designer Marie Abma.Stillman, Steele. "In the Studio: Dike Blair," ''Art in America'', September 2009. Retrieved November 17, 2020.

Work and critical reception

Blair's two bodies of work serve as counterpoints and foils for one another in regard to composition, color, texture and theme.Carlson, Ben. "Working Practice: Dike Blair." ''Modern Painters'', June 2007, p. 128. His realistic, deadpan paintings (primarily untitled, painted in gouache, and derived from his own snapshots) are more literal, yet illusionistic; the

Postminimal Postminimalism is an art term coined (as post-minimalism) by Robert Pincus-Witten in 1971Chilvers, Ian and Glaves-Smith, John, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art'', second edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. ...

, installation-like sculpture is abstract, but concrete and painterly. Together they investigate oppositions and liminal spaces—between nature and architecture, inside and outside, fullness and emptiness—and themes including pleasure and boredom, escapism and transcendence, and the intersection of designed environments, mass experience and desire.Griffin, Tim. "The Intangible Economy: Ricci Albenda, Stephen Hendee, Dike Blair," ''Artext'', 70, August–October 2000, p. 66–71.White, Roger
"Dike Blair,"
''The Brooklyn Rail'', May 2004, p. 14. Retrieved November 17, 2020. Blair's earlier gouaches focus on diaristic, largely American scenes (bedside set-ups, cocktails, cigarette butt-littered ashtrays, soda cans, VHS tapes) and anodyne transitory environments (motels, lounges, lobbies, Las Vegas, Disneyland) that

characterizes as background and details at "the edges of a sophisticated, travel-weary terrain."Rian, Jeff. "Ouverture, Dike Blair," ''Flash Art'', November/December 1997, p. 104.Saltz, Jerry. "Pulp Friction," ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...

'', January 17–23, 2007. ''

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creat ...

'' critic

Jerry Saltz Jerry Saltz (born February 19, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for '' New York'' magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for ''The Village Voice'', he received the Pu ...

writes that the paintings combine "a draftsman's attention to fact, a botanist's eye for type, and a detective's feel for telling clues," resulting in a no-man's-land genre "between illustration, photography, and forensic science." He likens the paintings to work by

Richard Prince Richard Prince (born 1949) is an American painter and photographer. In the mid-1970s, Prince made drawings and painterly collages that he has since disowned. His image, ''Untitled (Cowboy)'', a rephotographing of a photograph by Sam Abell and ...

and

Vija Celmins Vija Celmins (pronounced VEE-ya SELL-muns;Hilarie M. Sheets and Randy Kennedy (September 24, 2015)''New York Times''. lv, Vija Celmiņa, pronounced TSEL-meen-ya) is a Latvian American visual artist best known for photo-realistic paintings and dr ...

, while others make comparisons to the light and illusionism of

Vermeer Johannes Vermeer ( , , see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately succe ...

and the solitude of

Edward Hopper Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is widely known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Hopper created subdued drama ...

.Smolik, Noemi
"Dike Blair,"
''Artforum'', April 2017. Retrieved November 17, 2020. In later paintings, Blair turned to landscape, close-cropped flower images, views through obscured windows, and in the 2000s, to close-ups of eyes and nocturnal parking lots and snow scenes.Knight, Christopher

''Los Angeles Times'', May 16, 2008. Retrieved November 17, 2020.

Christopher Knight Christopher or Chris Knight may refer to: Film and television *Christopher Knight (actor) (born 1957), American actor * Christopher Knight (filmmaker), blogger and filmmaker * Chris Knight (''Neighbours''), fictional character in the soap opera '' ...

describes these later works largely devoid of people as "brimming over with unconquerable wanderlust." In the mid-1990s, Blair began producing décor-like works inspired by contemporary corporate and domestic design and guided by Japanese flower arrangement rules.Harrison, Helen
"Stepping Beyond the Traditional in Still Lifes,"
''The New York Times'', October 10, 1999, p. LI14. Retrieved November 17, 2020.Balaschak, Chris
"Dike Blair,"
''Frieze'', November/December 2005, p. 141. Retrieved November 17, 2020. They compress installation-work elements of light, material, color and image into discrete, hybrid sculptures that evoke interiors, furniture, drawing, architecture, landscapes and the human body.Dailey, Meghan
"Dike Blair,"
''Artforum'', January 2002, p. 141. Retrieved November 18, 2020.Prince, Richard. "Window On Their World: Dike Blair Interviewed by Richard Prince," ''ArtReview'', 2005, p. 78–81. Blair carefully manipulates elements such as electrical cords unfurling like lines across color-fields of industrial carpet, Plexiglas and plywood, lightboxes, shipping crates and lamps, seeking a balance in which objects retain their specificity yet read together as singular works.Williams, Gregory
"Critics' Picks: Dike Blair,"
''Artforum'', November 2001. Retrieved November 17, 2020. Paralleling his gouaches, the earlier sculptures examine themes involving atmosphere, designed space and consumer culture, while his post-2006 works take up phenomenological issues relating to the body, such as ocular versus corporeal experience of images, objects and space.

Later exhibitions

Blair's exhibitions at

Feature Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature (CAD), could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (software design) is an intentional distinguishing characteristic of a software item ...

(2001, 2004) and Mary Goldman (2005) inclined toward increasingly spare, refined presentation. They paired gouache paintings of lyrical water-streaked windows and flowers with electrical cord and geometric carpet lengths, glowing boxes and low-slung Minimalist objects, creating spaces that reviews describe as calming, mysterious and melancholic domestic tableaux (e.g. ''Some Of'' and ''And When'', 2001; ''to want to'', 2005). ''The Brooklyn Rail'' compared the effect of these exhibitions to the ambient music of artists such as

Brian Eno Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948) is a British musician, composer, record producer and visual artist best known for his contributions to ambient music and work in rock, pop an ...

, "tastefully calibrating" momentary experience, while remaining ambivalent about the consequences for subjectivity of living in a thoroughly designed world. In the later 2000s, Blair placed greater emphasis on perceptual issues, introducing close-up paintings of women's eyes and painted shipping crates that simultaneously evoke functional objects, picture planes, space dividers, walls and figures.Gibson, David
"Dike Blair,"
''Frieze'', September 2013, p. 172–3. Retrieved November 17, 2020. For the survey, "Dike Blair: Now and Again" (Weatherspoon Art Museum, 2009), he produced a subtly staged and lit experience involving two sculpture courts—mirror layouts to one another invoking the space in its entirety—that flanked a series of galleries housing his gouaches; ''Artforum'' described the show as an intimate and uncanny meditation on experiencing versus seeing, real versus illusionistic space. In exhibitions at Gagosian (2010], Feature (2013), Linn Lühn (2014) and Jürgen Becker Gallery (2017), Blair continued to expand the range of allusions and effects, painting crate-sculpture sides like pebbled-glass windows (''Those and These'', 2010), benday-dot print patterns sometimes suggesting peepholes (''Dance, Dance, Dance'', 2011), and minimal intimations of skies and landscapes (''OHCE'', 2014), which he adorned with paintings of eyes, interiors and other subjects.Fry, Naomi
"Dike Blair,"
''Frieze'', November–December 2010. Retrieved November 17, 2020.Linn Lühn

Exhibitions. Retrieved December 5, 2020. In 2017, Blair suspended his work on sculpture and took up oil painting.Rian, Jeff
"Dike Blair,"
''Purple'', Issue #33, 2020. Retrieved December 1, 2020.The Modern Institute
Dike Blair
Retrieved December 5, 2020. The subjects of those paintings are consistent which his gouaches—sometimes the same image—but the oils have a different physicality, including very slight impasto and intaglio. Around the same time, he began producing drawings, something that had not previously been part of his practice.Blair, Dike
''Dike Blair'': Drawings''
New York: Karma, 2019. Retrieved December 1, 2020.

Early career

Blair was born in 1952 in New Castle, Pennsylvania. He studied art at the

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 65 t ...

, Whitney Museum independent study program, and

University of Colorado, Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...

, and earned an MFA from

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

in 1977. He was part of the late 1970s New York art scene, performing at

CBGB CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan's East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for '' Country'', '' BlueGrass'', and '' Blues'', Kri ...

(1976) and frequenting art bars like Magoo’s, The

Mudd Club The Mudd Club was a nightclub located at 77 White Street in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It operated from 1978 to 1983 as a venue for underground music and counterculture events. It was opened by Steve Maas, Die ...

and Barnabus Rex. His early artwork consisted of abstract, formalist wall works made of acrylics and enamels poured and sprayed onto paper, Masonite and glass.Cohen, Ronny H
"Energism: An Attitude,"
''Artforum'', September 1980, p. p. 17–23. Retrieved November 17, 2020.Cohen, Ronny H
"Dike Blair,"
''Artforum'', January 1982, p. 78–80. Retrieved November 17, 2020. In the early 1980s, he began—somewhat ironically—painting small, illusionistic gouaches of sailboats, initially from observation or memory, akin to Sunday painting. He eventually integrated them into wall constructions, shown at Baskerville + Watson (1986) and Cash/Newhouse (1987).Sturtevant, Alfred. "Dike Blair," ''Arts'', April 1986.Heller, Sally. "Dike Blair," ''108 An East Village Review'', January 1987, p. 2. This work evolved into more widely known installations, such as his 1991 show at Ealan Wingate, based around photographs he took at Disney's

Epcot Epcot, stylized in all uppercase as EPCOT, is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks, Experiences and Products division. Inspired by an unreal ...

. The show featured mixed-media images installed in a darkened room scored to

Muzak Muzak is an American brand of background music played in retail stores and other public establishments. The name has been in use since 1934, and has been owned by a division or subsidiary of one or another company ever since. In 1981, Westingh ...

, and decorated and carpeted in mauve with plants and suburban benches; reviews described it, alternately, as suffused with loss and nostalgia, soothing, and surprisingly spiritual.Hagen, Charles
"Dike Blair,"
''The New York Times'', October 25, 1991, p. C5. Retrieved November 17, 2020.''The New Yorker''. "Goings On About Town: Photography," October 28, 1991. p. 84.

Other professional activities

Blair's professional activities include writing and teaching. He has contributed articles and reviews to ''Artforum'',''Artforum''
Dike Blair
Contributor. Retrieved November 20, 2020.'' ARTnews'',Blair, Dike. "Michael Goldberg," ''ARTnews'', March 1991, p. 142–3. ''Art Press'',Blair, Dike. "Flip-Flopping Fictions and the Interface of Some Spaces," ''Art Press'', #21, 2000, p. 144–8. ''Bomb'',Blair, Dike
"Cameron Martin,"
''Bomb'', Fall 2007, p. 14. Retrieved November 20, 2020. ''Harpers'',Blair, Dike and Michael Drake
"Typing test,"
Harper's, March 2000, p. 32–5. Retrieved November 20, 2020. and ''

Parkett Parkett was an international magazine specializing in art. The magazine ceased publication in Summer 2017 with its 100th issue and now continues online as a time capsule and archive with some 270 in-depth artists portraits, artists documents, newsl ...

'',Blair, Dike. "A Reflection or Two (on Richard Prince)," ''Parkett'', #72, 2004, p. 96–107. and served as contributing and associate editor for the Parisian magazine ''Purple'', writing about design, music, technology, film, art and architecture.Blair, Dike
"Dan Colen,"
''Purple'', Spring/Summer 2008, p. 352–3. Retrieved November 20, 2020.Blair, Dike
"Anti-Column,"
''Purple'', Fall/Winter 2014, p. 352–3. Retrieved November 20, 2020. He has also written the books ''Again: Selected Interviews and Essays'' (2007) and ''Punk'' (1978, with Isabelle Anscomber).Blair, Dike
''Again : Selected Interviews and Essays''
Chicago: Whitewalls, 2007. Retrieved November 20, 2020.Blair, Dike and Isabelle Anscomber
''Punk''
New York: Urizen Books, Inc., 1978. Retrieved November 20, 2020. Blair taught in the painting department at

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

from 1997 to 2017, as well as at

Art Institute of Boston Lesley University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education. As of 2018-19 Lesley University enrolled 6,593 students (2,707 undergraduate and 3,886 graduate). History ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

, and

University of Las Vegas The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Paradise, Nevada. The campus is about east of the Las Vegas Strip. It was formerly part of the University of N ...

.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Dike Blair
Fellows. Retrieved November 17, 2020.

Awards and public collections

Blair has received a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), the American Academy in Rome Prize (2010), and fellowships from the

Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation was founded in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany to operate his estate, Laurelton Hall, in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. It was designed to be a summer retreat for artists and craftspeople. In 1946 the estate ...

(1995) and Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation/

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

(1988).Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation
"1995,"
Previous Winners. Retrieved November 20, 2020. His work belongs to the public collections of the Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...

,Armstrong, Annie
"Dallas Art Museum Adds Eight Works to Collection with Dallas Art Fair Acquisition Fund,"
''ARTnews'', April 11, 2019. Retrieved November 20, 2020. Musee Des Beaux Arts La Chaux De Fonds (Switzerland), MUMOK (Vienna),MUMOK (Museum of Modern Art Stiftung Ludwig Wien)
Dike Blair, ''Shine''
Collection. Retrieved November 20, 2020.

,Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
Dike Blair
Collection. Retrieved November 20, 2020.

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum becam ...

,Portland Art Museum
''Untitled (three panels)'', Dike Blair
Collections. Retrieved November 20, 2020. and Weatherspoon Art Museum, among others.Weatherspoon Art Museum
Dike Blair
Artist. Retrieved November 20, 2020.

Work and critical reception

Later exhibitions

Early career

Other professional activities

Awards and public collections

References

External links