Feature Articles

June Issue 1999

 

Jerald Melberg Gallery - Charlotte Features Robert Cottingham

 

 

Jerald Melberg Gallery is pleased to announce a major retrospective of the works of internationally acclaimed artist, Robert Cottingham. The exhibition will be on view at the gallery in Charlotte through July 10, 1999. This is the artist's first solo exhibition in NC.

This twenty-seven piece collection of paintings, etchings, woodcuts, lithographs and monotypes was recently on view at the Manhattan Athletic Club as well as the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. While the works were created between 1974 and 1998, the retrospective exhibition is one that incorporates a lifetime of impressions and inspirations. Following this museum presentation, Jerald Melberg Gallery is proud to be able to present this exhibition in their gallery setting.

Born in 1935, Cottingham has spent most of his career glorifying objects that have been devalued and disparaged through the course of urban development. His pristine images depict the language of the American urban experience with graphic simplicity and formal elegance. It is the manner in which he honors objects such as a storefront marquis or an old railroad car that has brought him to the forefront of the Precisionist and Photorealist movements.

The inspiration for Cottingham's work comes from growing up in Brooklyn, his first sight of Hopper's Early Sunday Morning, jobs in a candy factory and a chrome-plating plant as well as his love for graphic design and jazz. Cottingham's excursions into New York, specifically to Times Square, at a very impressionable age, had a lasting influence that one continues to see in his work. His imagery conveys his love of downtown America in that Cottingham tries to represent all the downtowns he has visited and to capture the essence of uniquely-American environments. One theme that remains prevalent throughout Cottingham's work is the commercial facade, yet it is the manner in which it is presented upon the canvas or the paper that changes with each image. For example, Cottingham frequently singles out individual letters of a sign as represented in the color lithographs of K and F. while in other images such as Tattoo and Bud, he incorporates the entire facade. Also included in the exhibition are two large oil paintings entitled Champagne and Dixie, each illustrating elements of the American marquis. Both are quintessential museum-quality works that demonstrate the photorealist painting technique for which Cottingham has received much critical acclaim.

Cottingham received his education at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and has been awarded numerous fellowships over his career, including one from the National Endowment for the Arts. A member and former teacher at the National Academy of Design, Cottingham has had a major presence on the international art scene for some time, having been honored with 75 solo exhibitions and over 200 group exhibitions since 1966. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the National Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others.

All works in the exhibition are for sale.

For further information check our NC Commercial Gallery listings or call the gallery at 704/365-3000.

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