Robert James Reed Jr. (July 9, 1938 – December 26, 2014) born in
Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Ch ...
, was an American artist and professor of painting and printmaking at
Yale School of Art
The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, painti ...
for 45 years.
In 1987, Reed was appointed to Yale School of Art's tenured permanent faculty making him, at the time of his death, the School's first and only African-American to be so appointed in the School's then 145 year history. In his artwork, Reed is known for his geometric abstraction and personalized symbols to create a language of abstraction. He employs abstract symbols, color and deeply textured brushwork to create his iconic imagery. As Reed would explain, fragments, paths, cultural and universal signs and symbols, remembered childhood images and places are organized into his imagery. His abstractions are referential and have their basis in "real" form that exists solidly in the real world in real space. His work includes paintings, drawings, monotypes, prints and collages.
Early life and education
Reed was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1938. He attended segregated public elementary (
Jefferson Jefferson may refer to:
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* Jefferson (surname)
* Jefferson (given name)
People
* Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), third president of the United States
* Jefferson (footballer, born 1970), full name Jefferson Tomaz de Souza, Brazilian foo ...
) and high (Burley) schools in Charlottesville. He graduated with a B.A. from
Morgan State, an historically black college in Baltimore, Maryland (1958). However, unable to make the final tuition payment Reed's graduation date was recorded as 1959 when he was able to pay off what he owed. He earned his B.F.A. (1960) and M.F.A. (1962)
at
Yale School of Art
The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, painti ...
. While at Yale, Reed studied with and was influenced by
Josef Albers
Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, ...
,
Neil Welliver
Neil Gavin Welliver (July 22, 1929 – April 5, 2005) was an American modern artist, best known for his large-scale landscape paintings inspired by the deep woods near his home in Maine. One of his sons, Titus Welliver, later became a successful ...
, and
Jon Schueler
Jon Schueler (September 12, 1916 – August 5, 1992) was an American painter known for his large-scale, abstract compositions which evoke nature.Smith, Roberta. "Jon Schueler, 75, Abstract Artist Whose Paintings Evoked Nature." ''New York Tim ...
. In later years, he was influenced by
Philip Guston
Philip Guston (born Phillip Goldstein, June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980), was a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. Early in his five decade career, muralist David Siquieros described him as one of "the most promising ...
who was a colleague at Skidmore College in the mid-1960's.
While a student at Yale, Reed was selected to attend Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art
in 1960. Reed credited this summer experience as being pivotal to his development as an artist. There he meet another student,
Özer Kabas. When Reed returned to Yale at the end of the program, Kabas arranged a job for Reed working for Josef Albers. Mr. Albers, as Reed always referred to him, hired Reed to work at Alber's studio in Yale's
Street Hall
Street Hall is a historic building on Old Campus of Yale University. It housed the first collegiate art school in the United States, a gift from Augustus Russell Street, a native of New Haven and graduate of the Class of 1812, to Yale for the es ...
in preparing Alber's first ''Interaction of Color'' book. Reed's job was doing the mixing for the plates. The plates were given to Reed and his job was to take the colors and mix them in silkscreen ink and to record the color recipes. Albers would come in regularly and say "Yes" and "No" keeping tabs on Reed's work. The recipes would then go to the silkscreen company.
Reed was an ardent adherent of Albers' pedagogy and Foundation Studies in art which Reed continued to advocate throughout his teaching career.
Career
Academic
Reed's career as an art educator began as an assistant professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1962. This was followed by his appointment as assistant professor at
Skidmore College
Skidmore College is a private liberal arts college in Saratoga Springs, New York. Approximately 2,650 students are enrolled at Skidmore pursuing a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree in one of more than 60 areas of study.
History
Sk ...
in
Saratoga Springs, New York
Saratoga Springs is a city in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 28,491 at the 2020 census. The name reflects the presence of mineral springs in the area, which has made Saratoga a popular resort destination for over 2 ...
, from 1965 to 1969.
Reed's 45-year teaching career at the Yale School of Art began in 1969 as assistant professor of painting, followed by appointment to the tenured permanent faculty as professor of painting in 1987, a position he held until his death in 2014.
From 1970-1975, Reed served as director of the Yale Summer School of Art.
Over the five years of his directorship, he assembled a summer faculty of artists which included
Philip Guston
Philip Guston (born Phillip Goldstein, June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980), was a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. Early in his five decade career, muralist David Siquieros described him as one of "the most promising ...
, Arnold Bittleman,
Erwin Hauer
Erwin Hauer (January 18, 1926, Vienna, Austria - December 22, 2017, Branford, Connecticut) was an Austrian-born American sculptor who studied first at Vienna's Academy of Applied Arts and later under Josef Albers at Yale. Hauer was an early pro ...
,
Gabor Peterdi
Gabor Peterdi (1915 in Pestújhely, Hungary – 2001 in Stamford, Connecticut) was a Hungarian-American painter and printmaker who immigrated to the United States in 1939. ,
Joan Snyder
Joan Snyder (born April 16, 1940) is an American Painting, painter from New York City, New York. She is a MacArthur Fellows Program, MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellow, and a National Endowment for the Arts, National End ...
,
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...
,
Al Held
Al Held (October 12, 1928 – July 27, 2005) was an American Abstract expressionist painter. He was particularly well known for his large scale Hard-edge paintings. As an artist, multiple stylistic changes occurred throughout his career, howe ...
,
Lester Johnson,
Judy Pfaff
Judy Pfaff (born 1946) is an American artist known mainly for installation art and sculptures, though she also produces paintings and prints. Pfaff has received numerous awards for her work, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundat ...
,
Romare Bearden
Romare Bearden (September 2, 1911 – March 12, 1988) was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City a ...
, and
Sam Gilliam
Sam Gilliam ( ; November 30, 1933 – June 25, 2022) was an American color field painter and lyrical abstractionist artist. Gilliam was associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington, D.C.-area artists that developed a form ...
. Reed was known to periodically take his undergraduate students to Norfolk where he would recreate a truncated Norfolk experience over the course of a weekend.
Reed served as juror or curator for numerous shows including the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, Connecticut, Silvermine Arts Center in New Canaan, and Artspace in New Haven.
Reed was a guest artist and lecturer at over 60 colleges and universities throughout the country and in Europe.
He authored several art education programs including Acre, Spokane, Washington; Site, Cancun, Mexico; SIX: Summer In Experiment, Saratoga, New York; and The Institute for Studio Studies, Auvillar, France.
He served on the board of directors o
Lyme AcademyCollege of Fine Arts 2010–2012; the
MacDowell Colony
MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire, United States, founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDowell ...
, 1987–1990, and
Virginia Center for Creative Arts.
Artistic
Throughout his academic career, Reed continued to be a prolific artist producing new bodies of work every 8 to 10 years. His artistic career began in the 1960s and found early success with a one-man show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1973. A committed abstractionist, he resisted pressure in the 1970s to create Black identity art. As Reed would state in an 1986 interview "I think of myself as an artist who is Black. An artist who goes to the same well as Black identity artists for metaphors for experiences that I have had in the stereotype Black experience. I know what it is to automatically go to the back of the bus. I know what it is to be spat on. And you find some other way or representing that." However, Reed was, for the most part, overlooked during the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He continued to work in a self-imposed obscurity due in part to his persistence in developing his personal visual and symbolic language of abstraction; and in part to the tragic and untimely death both his mother and sister, his only sibling, in 1965 which left him deeply reclusive about both his personal and artistic life.
The most recognizable of Reed's bodies of work are:
* ''Plum Nellie'' (1970s): the use of symbolic color as a reaction to his Interaction of Color experience in which color is a character and landscape;
* ''San Romano'' from the 1980s pays homage to Paulo Uccello's sixteenth century paintings of Battles of San Romano;
* ''Tree For Mine'' (1990s), a personal exploration of the people and places of Reed's remembered childhood home of Charlottesville, Virginia;
* ''Galactic Journal'' (2000s), a highly autobiographical work journaling the paths of his life over nearly eight decades
Collections, awards, and exhibitions
Reed's works are in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including the
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
, New York, NY;
National Academy Museum
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fi ...
, New York, NY;
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...
, Washington, DC;
Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...
, Minneapoli, MN;
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...
, Minneapolis, M;
Yale University Art Gallery
The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...
, New Haven, CT;
Fralin Museum of Art
The Fralin Museum of Art is an art museum at the University of Virginia. Before 2012, it was known as the University of Virginia Art Museum. It occupies the historic Thomas H. Bayly Building on Rugby Road in Charlottesville, Virginia, a short dis ...
, Charlottesville, Va.;
Ogden Museum of Southern Art
The Ogden Museum of Southern Art is located in the Warehouse Arts District of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana.
Established in 1999, and in Stephen Goldring Hall at 925 Camp Street since 2003.
The building
The Ogden consists of two main buildin ...
New Orleans;
Detroit Institute of Art
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, has one of the largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers with a major renovation and expansion project complete ...
, Detroit, MI; the
African American Museum, Dallas, TX; the
Martin Museum of Art, Baylor University, Waco, TX, and the
Perez Art Museum Miami, FL; among others.
His work was also included among the 407 artists exhibited in the 2015 inaugural exhibition "America Is Hard To See" for the opening of the new
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
, New York, New York.
Reed is the recipient of a number of awards and honors including:
* Yale University, William Devane Medalist for outstanding undergraduate teaching 201
*
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
fellow, New York, 2009
*
College Art Association
The College Art Association of America (CAA) is the principal organization in the United States for professionals in the visual arts, from students to art historians to emeritus faculty. Founded in 1911, it "promotes these arts and their understa ...
Distinguished Teaching of Art Award, 2004;
* Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts,
Minneapolis College of Art and Design
The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a private college specializing in the visual arts and located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. MCAD currently enrolls approximately 800 students. MCAD is one of just a few major art schools to offer ...
, 2001
National Council of Arts AdministratorsAward, 2000
*
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) is a residential artist community in Amherst, Virginia, USA. Since 1971, VCCA has offered residencies of varying lengths with flexible scheduling for international artists, writers, and composers at ...
residency, 1987
*
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March  ...
residency, 1980
Darmouth Artist in Residence 1976
In recognition of Reed's contribution to undergraduate teaching, the Robert Reed Scholarship Fund at the Yale School of Art was established and the Yale School of Art building, GO1 classroom was named in his honor as the "Robert Reed Studio" where Reed's admonition to his basic drawing students is inscribed at the entry "Drawing is a search, not a destination".
In further recognition of his contribution to the Yale School of Art, a solo retrospective exhibition of his work was held in 2015, "Robert Reed: Non-Stop Painting", curated by Robert Storr, former dean, Yale School of Art.
Personal life
Reed was a member of the Alpha Iota chapter of
Kappa Alpha Psi
Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. () is a historically African American fraternity. Since the fraternity's founding on January 5, 1911 at Indiana University Bloomington, the fraternity has never restricted membership on the basis of color, creed ...
fraternity since 1956 having served as president of his line.
Reed died of cancer in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 26, 2014.
Reed is buried at the historic
Grove Street Cemetery
Grove Street Cemetery or Grove Street Burial Ground is a cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut, that is surrounded by the Yale University campus. It was organized in 1796 as the New Haven Burying Ground and incorporated in October 1797 to replace the ...
in New Haven.
References
External links
* Robert Reed Artist website: https://www.robertreedstudio.com
* Artist info: https://www.artist-info.com/artist/Robert-Reed
* Artcyclopedia: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/reed_robert.html
* National Council of Arts Administrators: https://www.ncaaarts.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reed, Robert
1938 births
2014 deaths
People from Charlottesville, Virginia
Yale University faculty
Morgan State University alumni
Artists from Virginia
20th-century American printmakers
21st-century American printmakers
Yale School of Art alumni
Skidmore College faculty
African-American printmakers
20th-century African-American artists
21st-century African-American artists