Richard Merkin Art
American, 1938-2009
Richard Merkin’s (1938 – September 5, 2009) work conjures up scenes that evoke the raucous spirit of the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. In his witty, often eccentric illustrations, Merkin depicts movie stars, jazz musicians, sports heroes and literary impresarios co-mingling with more personal references. In his highly stylized approach to the figure, Merkin privileges color relationships, balance and juxtaposition over strictly literal descriptions of his subjects. And humor; there’s always humor.(Biography provided by Graves International Art)
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Artist: Richard Merkin
Bulldog Drummond and the Great Coca-Cola Mystery by Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Hudson, NY
An iconic mixed media example of Richard Merkin's art.
Bulldog Drummond and the Great Coca-Cola Mystery (1965)
Mixed media on paper
51" x 33"
53" x 35" x 2" framed
Signed "Merkin" ...
Category
1960s Modern Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Paper, Mixed Media
Large Richard Merkin Painting Harlem Jazz Club, New Yorker Magazine Cover Artist
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
Richard Marshall Merkin (American, 1938-2009)
Gladys and Half-Pint
Hand signed 'Merkin' (center right),
Titled, inscribed, dated, and initialed 'GLADYS BENTLEY AND FRANKIE 'HALF-PINT' JAXON 1997/R.M.' verso.
Oil on canvas
37 1/2 x 72 in. (95.3 x 182.9 cm)
framed 39 1/4 x 74 x 2 in.
Gladys Alberta Bentley (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance. Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tailcoat and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience. On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player" and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". She was frequently harassed for wearing men's clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married, claiming to have been "cured" by taking female hormones.
Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon, born Frank Devera Jackson was an African American vaudeville singer, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, orphaned, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname of "Half Pint" referred to his 5'2" height. He started in show business around 1910 as a singer in Kansas City, before travelling extensively with medicine shows in Texas, and then touring the eastern seaboard. His feminine voice and outrageous manner, often as a female impersonator, established him as a crowd favorite. By 1917 he had begun working regularly in Atlantic City, New Jersey and in Chicago, often with such performers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, whose staging he helped design.
He served slightly less than a year in the United States Army in 1918–1919 and rose to the rank of sergeant. In the late 1920s he sang with top jazz bands when they passed through Chicago, working with Bennie Moten, King Oliver, Freddie Keppard and others. He performed and recorded with the pianists Cow Cow Davenport, Tampa Red and "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, recording with the latter pair under the name of The Black Hillbillies. He also recorded with the Harlem Hamfats. In the 1930s, he was often on radio in the Chicago area, and led his own band, titled Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and His Quarts of Joy. Jaxon appeared with Duke Ellington in a film short titled Black and Tan (1929), and with Bessie Smith in "St. Louis Blues" (1929). Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (1931) is based both musically and lyrically on Jaxon's "Willie the Weeper" (1927).
Richard Merkin, Sometimes described as Rhode Island’s most famous New York artist, Richard Merkin has led a dual life for nearly 40 years - teaching at RISD while enjoying a celebrated painting career based in New York City. He has exhibited in countless gallery and museum shows in the US and abroad and is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the RISD museum and many others. In addition to contributing drawings and paintings to The New Yorker (along with, Art Spiegelman, Saul Steinberg, Harper’s, The New York Times Sunday Magazine and several books on Erotica and Baseball, he is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a former style columnist for GQ. Merkin’s honors include a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship and the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Museums and Selected Collections :
The American Federation of Arts, New York, NY
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
First city Bank, Chicago, Ill
Fisk University Art Gallery, Nashville, TN
Hallmark Collections, Kansas City, MO
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Maimi-Dade Junior College, Miami, FL
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
Minnesota Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, RI
McClung Museum, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
Pennsylvania Acadamy of the Arts, Philadelphia PA
Prudential Insurance Company, Boston, Ma
Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Sara Robey Foundation, New York, NY
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
State University of Brockport, Brockport, NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Selected Publications :
1986-Present Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair ..1988-Present, New Yorker... 1988-Present, style column, GQ...1997, Text and Illustration for The Tijuana Bibles, published by Simon & Shuster, 1995, Illustrated book, Leagues Apart: the Men and Times of the Negro Baseball Leagues published by Morrow.
1967 Cover of the Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” Album (Mr. Merkin appears in the back row, right of center)
RISD: MFA in Painting, 1963; Professor, Department of Painting
special skill: Merging his role as flaneur (connoisseur of city life) with his role as painter and social historian, Merkin retrieves lost cultural artifacts – a Turkish cigarette, a gangster, a bowler and generally “things most people don’t know about” – and reconstitutes their Jazz Age virtues on canvas in cubist, comic-laced landscapes of tropical color. (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor)
breaking in: Perpetually on the fly from his middle-class Brooklyn background, Merkin found the perfect escape in the mid ‘60s in George Frazier, a dapper Boston columnist who inspired the emerging New York painter’s overnight reinvention of himself. The elements of structure, stability and surprise he admired in this well-dressed dandy – a cool linen suit, a splash of suspender, a polka dot scarf and pearl-handled walking stick – soon surfaced in paintings peopled by impeccable underdogs of café society along with his personal pop heroes: William Burroughs, Bobby Short and Krazy Kat...
Category
1990s American Modern Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil Pastel, Oil
Prince Valiant Pop Art 1969 Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
Poetry by J.D. REED Artwork by Richard Merkin screenprint in color, 1969, edition 22/50 Published by Bizzaro, Providence, R.I.
Richard Marshall Merkin (1938-2009) was an American painter, illustrator and arts educator. Merkin's fascination with the 1920s and 1930s defined his art and shaped his identity as a professional dandy. Merkin traveled back in time as an artist, to the time of the interwar years, creating narrative scenes (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor) in bright colors of jazz musicians, film stars, writers, and sports heroes. Merkin was as well known for his painting and illustration work as he was for his eccentric collecting habits and his outré fashion sense. he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in Painting.
Merkin began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1963 and remained there for 42 years, during which time he built his reputation in New York. Some notable students Merkin taught at RISD include Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of the band Talking Heads and Martin Mull.
Merkin had been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair since 1986 and a regular contributor of illustrations to The New Yorker since 1988, as well as Harper's and The New York Times' Sunday Magazine. From 1988–1991, he wrote a monthly style column called "Merkin on Style" for Gentlemen's Quarterly.
Merkin also designed several album covers for the Jazz record label Chiaroscuro Records for artists such as Mary Lou Williams, Ruby Braff, and Ellis Larkins.
Merkin's friend, the writer Tom Wolfe wrote in an email to the New York Times upon Merkin's death:
"He was the greatest of that breed, the Artist Dandy, since Sargent, Whistler and Salvador Dali, Like Dali, he had one of the few remaining Great Mustaches in the art world" Perpetually on the fly from his middle-class Brooklyn background, Merkin found the perfect escape in the mid ‘60s in George Frazier, a dapper Boston columnist who inspired the emerging New York painter’s overnight reinvention of himself. The elements of structure, stability and surprise he admired in this well-dressed dandy, a cool linen suit, a splash of suspender, a polka dot scarf and pearl-handled walking stick, soon surfaced in paintings peopled by impeccable underdogs of café society along with his personal pop heroes, William Burroughs, Bobby Short...
Category
1960s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Marilyn Monroe Pop Art 1969 Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
Poetry by J.D. REED Artwork by Richard Merkin screenprint in color, 1969, edition 22/50 Published by Bizzaro, Providence, R.I.
Richard Marshall Merkin (1938-2009) was an American painter, illustrator and arts educator. Merkin's fascination with the 1920s and 1930s defined his art and shaped his identity as a professional dandy. Merkin traveled back in time as an artist, to the time of the interwar years, creating narrative scenes (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor) in bright colors of jazz musicians, film stars, writers, and sports heroes. Merkin was as well known for his painting and illustration work as he was for his eccentric collecting habits and his outré fashion sense. he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in Painting.
Merkin began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1963 and remained there for 42 years, during which time he built his reputation in New York. Some notable students Merkin taught at RISD include Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of the band Talking Heads and Martin Mull.
Merkin had been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair since 1986 and a regular contributor of illustrations to The New Yorker since 1988, as well as Harper's and The New York Times' Sunday Magazine. From 1988–1991, he wrote a monthly style column called "Merkin on Style" for Gentlemen's Quarterly.
Merkin also designed several album covers for the Jazz record label Chiaroscuro Records for artists such as Mary Lou Williams, Ruby Braff, and Ellis Larkins.
Merkin's friend, the writer Tom Wolfe wrote in an email to the New York Times upon Merkin's death:
"He was the greatest of that breed, the Artist Dandy, since Sargent, Whistler and Salvador Dali, Like Dali, he had one of the few remaining Great Mustaches in the art world" Perpetually on the fly from his middle-class Brooklyn background, Merkin found the perfect escape in the mid ‘60s in George Frazier, a dapper Boston columnist who inspired the emerging New York painter’s overnight reinvention of himself. The elements of structure, stability and surprise he admired in this well-dressed dandy, a cool linen suit, a splash of suspender, a polka dot scarf and pearl-handled walking stick, soon surfaced in paintings peopled by impeccable underdogs of café society along with his personal pop heroes, William Burroughs, Bobby Short...
Category
1960s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Stepin Fetchit Pop Art 1969 Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
Poetry by J.D. REED Artwork by Richard Merkin screenprint in color, 1969, edition 22/50 Published by Bizzaro, Providence, R.I.
of African American interest for collectors.
Richard Marshall Merkin (1938-2009) was an American painter, illustrator and arts educator. Merkin's fascination with the 1920s and 1930s defined his art and shaped his identity as a professional dandy. Merkin traveled back in time as an artist, to the time of the interwar years, creating narrative scenes (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor) in bright colors of jazz musicians, film stars, writers, and sports heroes. Merkin was as well known for his painting and illustration work as he was for his eccentric collecting habits and his outré fashion sense. he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in Painting.
Merkin began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1963 and remained there for 42 years, during which time he built his reputation in New York. Some notable students Merkin taught at RISD include Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of the band Talking Heads and Martin Mull.
Merkin had been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair since 1986 and a regular contributor of illustrations to The New Yorker since 1988, as well as Harper's and The New York Times' Sunday Magazine. From 1988–1991, he wrote a monthly style column called "Merkin on Style" for Gentlemen's Quarterly.
Merkin also designed several album covers for the Jazz record label Chiaroscuro Records for artists such as Mary Lou Williams, Ruby Braff, and Ellis Larkins.
Merkin's friend, the writer Tom Wolfe wrote in an email to the New York Times upon Merkin's death:
"He was the greatest of that breed, the Artist Dandy, since Sargent, Whistler and Salvador Dali, Like Dali, he had one of the few remaining Great Mustaches in the art world" Perpetually on the fly from his middle-class Brooklyn background, Merkin found the perfect escape in the mid ‘60s in George Frazier, a dapper Boston columnist who inspired the emerging New York painter’s overnight reinvention of himself. The elements of structure, stability and surprise he admired in this well-dressed dandy, a cool linen suit, a splash of suspender, a polka dot scarf and pearl-handled walking stick, soon surfaced in paintings peopled by impeccable underdogs of café society along with his personal pop heroes, William Burroughs, Bobby Short...
Category
1960s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Epitaph/Tombstone jack Armstrong Pop Art 1969 Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
Poetry by J.D. REED Artwork by Richard Merkin screenprint in color, 1969, edition 22/50 Published by Bizzaro, Providence, R.I.
Richard Marshall Merkin (1938-2009) was an American painter, illustrator and arts educator. Merkin's fascination with the 1920s and 1930s defined his art and shaped his identity as a professional dandy. Merkin traveled back in time as an artist, to the time of the interwar years, creating narrative scenes (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor) in bright colors of jazz musicians, film stars, writers, and sports heroes. Merkin was as well known for his painting and illustration work as he was for his eccentric collecting habits and his outré fashion sense. he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in Painting.
Merkin began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1963 and remained there for 42 years, during which time he built his reputation in New York. Some notable students Merkin taught at RISD include Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of the band Talking Heads and Martin Mull.
Merkin had been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair since 1986 and a regular contributor of illustrations to The New Yorker since 1988, as well as Harper's and The New York Times' Sunday Magazine. From 1988–1991, he wrote a monthly style column called "Merkin on Style" for Gentlemen's Quarterly.
Merkin also designed several album covers for the Jazz record label Chiaroscuro Records for artists such as Mary Lou Williams, Ruby Braff, and Ellis Larkins.
Merkin's friend, the writer Tom Wolfe wrote in an email to the New York Times upon Merkin's death:
"He was the greatest of that breed, the Artist Dandy, since Sargent, Whistler and Salvador Dali, Like Dali, he had one of the few remaining Great Mustaches in the art world" Perpetually on the fly from his middle-class Brooklyn background, Merkin found the perfect escape in the mid ‘60s in George Frazier, a dapper Boston columnist who inspired the emerging New York painter’s overnight reinvention of himself. The elements of structure, stability and surprise he admired in this well-dressed dandy, a cool linen suit, a splash of suspender, a polka dot scarf and pearl-handled walking stick, soon surfaced in paintings peopled by impeccable underdogs of café society along with his personal pop heroes, William Burroughs, Bobby Short...
Category
1960s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Large Richard Merkin Painting Geeks & Gargoyles New Yorker Magazine Cover Artist
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
#9 Geeks and Gargoyles (for Nelson Algren)
Mixed Media and Collage
Provenance:
Obelisk Gallery, Boston, 1967 (label verso)
the word Chicago is featured prominently in this piece.
Sometimes described as Rhode Island’s most famous New York artist, Richard Merkin has led a dual life for nearly 40 years - teaching at RISD while enjoying a celebrated painting career based in New York City. He has exhibited in countless gallery and museum shows in the US and abroad and is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the RISD museum and many others. In addition to contributing drawings and paintings to The New Yorker (along with, Art Spiegelman, Saul Steinberg, Harper’s, The New York Times Sunday Magazine and several books on Erotica and Baseball, he is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a former style columnist for GQ. Merkin’s honors include a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship and the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Museums and Selected Collections :
The American Federation of Arts, New York, NY
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
First city Bank, Chicago, Ill
Fisk University Art Gallery, Nashville, TN
Hallmark Collections, Kansas City, MO
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Maimi-Dade Junior College, Miami, FL
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
Minnesota Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, RI
McClung Museum, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
Pennsylvania Acadamy of the Arts, Philadelphia PA
Prudential Insurance Company, Boston, Ma
Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Sara Robey Foundation, New York, NY
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
State University of Brockport, Brockport, NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Selected Publications :
1986-Present Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair ..1988-Present, New Yorker... 1988-Present, style column, GQ...1997, Text and Illustration for The Tijuana Bibles, published by Simon & Shuster, 1995, Illustrated book, Leagues Apart: the Men and Times of the Negro Baseball Leagues published by Morrow.
1967 Cover of the Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” Album (Mr. Merkin appears in the back row, right of center)
RISD: MFA in Painting, 1963; Professor, Department of Painting
special skill: Merging his role as flaneur (connoisseur of city life) with his role as painter and social historian, Merkin retrieves lost cultural artifacts – a Turkish cigarette, a gangster, a bowler and generally “things most people don’t know about” – and reconstitutes their Jazz Age virtues on canvas in cubist, comic-laced landscapes of tropical color. (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor)
breaking in: Perpetually on the fly from his middle-class Brooklyn background, Merkin found the perfect escape in the mid ‘60s in George Frazier, a dapper Boston columnist who inspired the emerging New York painter’s overnight reinvention of himself. The elements of structure, stability and surprise he admired in this well-dressed dandy – a cool linen suit, a splash of suspender, a polka dot scarf and pearl-handled walking stick – soon surfaced in paintings peopled by impeccable underdogs of café society along with his personal pop heroes: William Burroughs, Bobby Short...
Category
1960s Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Mixed Media
Kansas City Monarchs, Lithograph by Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Richard Merkin, American (1938 - 2009)
Title: Kansas City Monarchs
Year: circa 1977
Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil
Edition: 250
Image Size: 18.5 x 26.5 inc...
Category
1970s Contemporary Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Lithograph
Oedipus and Luxor /// Contemporary Richard Merkin Figurative Funny Screenprint
By Richard Merkin
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
Artist: Richard Merkin (American, 1938-2009)
Title: "Oedipus and Luxor"
*Signed by Merkin in pencil lower right
Circa: 1980
Medium: Original Screenprint on white Arches 88 paper
Limi...
Category
1980s Contemporary Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
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The Appropriation piece: Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein Unique var.
By Richard Pettibone
Located in New York, NY
Richard Pettibone
The Appropriation Print Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, 1970
Silkscreen in colors on masonite board (unique variant on sculpted board)
Hand-signed by artist, Signed and dated on the front (see close up image)
Bespoke frame Included
This is a rare example of Pettibone's iconic Appropriation Print, as it's silkscreened and sculpted on masonite board rather than paper, giving it a different background hue, and enabling it work to be framed so uniquely.
The Appropriation print is one of the most coveted prints Pettibone ever created ; the regular edition is on a full sheet with white background; the present example was silkscreened on board, allowing it to be framed in 3-D. While we do not know how many examples of this graphic work Pettibone created, so far the present work is the only one example we have ever seen on the public market since 1970. (Other editions of The Appropriation Print have been printed on vellum, wove paper and pink and yellow paper.)
This 1970 homage to Andy Warhol, Frank Stella and Roy Lichtenstein exemplifies the type of artistic appropriation he was engaging in early on during the height of the Pop Art movement - long before more contemporary artists like Deborah Kass, Louise Lawler, etc. followed suit.
This silkscreen was in its original 1970 vintage period frame; a bespoke custom hand cut black wood outer frame was subsequently created especially to house the work, giving it a distinctive sculptural aesthetic.
Measurements:
Framed 14.5 inches vertical by 18 inches horizontal by 2 inches
Work
13 inches vertical by 16.5 inches horizontal
Richard Pettibone biography:
Richard Pettibone (American, b.1938) is one of the pioneering artists to use appropriation techniques. Pettibone was born in Los Angeles, and first worked with shadow boxes and assemblages, illustrating his interest in craft, construction, and working in miniature scales. In 1964, he created the first of his appropriated pieces, two tiny painted “replicas” of the iconic Campbell’s soup cans by Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987). By 1965, he had created several “replicas” of paintings by American artists, such as Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), Ed Ruscha (b.1937), and others, among them some of the biggest names in Pop Art. Pettibone chose to recreate the work of leading avant-garde artists whose careers were often centered on themes of replication themselves, further lending irony to his work. Pettibone also created both miniature and life-sized sculptural works, including an exact copy of Bicycle Wheel by Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887–1968), and in the 1980s, an entire series of sculptures of varying sizes replicating the most famous works of Constantin Brancusi (Romanian, 1876–1957). In more recent years, Pettibone has created paintings based on the covers of poetry books by Ezra Pound, as well as sculptures drawn from the grid compositions of Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944). Pettibone straddles the lines of appropriation, Pop, and Conceptual Art, and has received critical attention for decades for the important questions his work raises about authorship, craftsmanship, and the original in art. His work has been exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, and the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, CA. Pettibone is currently based in New York.
"I wished I had stuck with the idea of just painting the same
painting like the soup can and never painting another painting.
When someone wanted one, you would just do another one.
Does anybody do that now?"
Andy Warhol, 1981
Since the mid-1960s, Richard Pettibone has been making
hand-painted, small-scale copies of works by other artists — a
practice due to which he is best known as a precursor of appropriation art — and for a decade now, he has been revisiting subjects from across his career. In his latest exhibitions at
Castelli Gallery, Pettibone has been showing more of the “same”
paintings that had already been part of his 2005–6 museum retrospective,1
and also including “new” subject matter drawn from
his usual roster of European modernists and American postwar
artists. Art critic Kim Levin laid out some phases of the intricate spectrum from copies to repetitions in her review of the
Warhol-de Chirico showdown, a joint exhibition at the heyday
of appropriation art in the mid-1980s when Warhol’s appropriations of de Chirico’s work effectively revaluated “the grand
old auto-appropriator”.
Upon having counted well over a dozen
Disquieting Muses by de Chirico, Levin speculated: “Maybe he
kept doing them because no one got the point. Maybe he needed the money. Maybe he meant it when he said his technique
had improved, and traditional skills were what mattered.”
On
the other side, Warhol, in her eyes, was the “latter-day exemplar
of museless creativity”.
To Pettibone, traditional skills certainly
still matter, as he practices his contemporary version of museless creativity. He paints the same painting again and again,
no matter whether anybody shows an interest in it or not. His
work, of course, takes place well outside the historical framework of what Levin aptly referred to as the “modern/postmodern wrestling match”,
but neither was this exactly his match
to begin with.
Pettibone is one of appropriation art’s trailblazers, but his diverse
selection of sources removes from his work the critique of the
modernist myth of originality most commonly associated with
appropriation art in a narrow sense, as we see, for example, in
Sherrie Levine’s practice of re-photographing the work of Walker
Evans and Edward Weston. In particular, during his photorealist
phase of the 1970s, Pettibone’s sources ranged widely across
several art-historical periods. His appropriations of the 1980s
and 1990s spanned from Picasso etchings and Brancusi sculptures to Shaker furniture and even included Ezra Pound’s poetry.
Pettibone has professed outright admiration for his source artists, whose work he shrinks and tweaks to comic effect but, nevertheless, always treats with reverence and care. His response
to these artists is primarily on an aesthetic level, owing much
to the fact that his process relies on photographs. By the same
token, the aesthetic that attracts him is a graphic one that lends
itself to reproduction. Painstakingly copying other artists’ work by hand has been a way of making
it his own, yet each source is acknowledged in
his titles and, occasionally, in captions on white
margins that he leaves around the image as an
indication that the actual source is a photographic image. The enjoyment he receives in copying
is part of the motivation behind doing it, as is
the pleasure he receives from actually being with
the finished painting — a considerable private
dimension of his work. His copies are “handmade
readymades” that he meticulously paints in great quantities in his studio upstate in New York; the commitment
to manual labor and the time spent at material production has
become an increasingly important dimension of his recent work.
Pettibone operates at some remove from the contemporary art
scene, not only by staying put geographically, but also by refusing to recoup the simulated lack of originality through the
creation of a public persona.
In so doing, Pettibone takes a real
risk. He places himself in opposition to conceptualism, and he is
apprehensive of an understanding of art as the mere illustration
of an idea. His reading of Marcel Duchamp’s works as beautiful
is revealing about Pettibone’s priorities in this respect.
When
Pettibone, for aesthetic pleasure, paints Duchamp’s Poster...
Category
1970s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
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Masonite, Pencil, Screen, Mixed Media
Acrylic Painting of Pastel Dreamy Drips, Mixed Media Subtle Rainbow, Cyanotype
Located in Barcelona, ES
This is an exclusive handmade mixed media cyanotype with hand-painted acrylic paint in pastel tones.
Details:
Title: Pastel Dreamy Drips
Medium: Mixed Media on Watercolor Paper
Siz...
Category
2010s Modern Richard Merkin Art
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Archival Ink, Mixed Media, Oil, Acrylic, Watercolor, Archival Paper
At The Dwan Gallery: Historic exhibition poster (Hand Signed by Larry Rivers)
By Larry Rivers
Located in New York, NY
Larry Rivers
At The Dwan Gallery: Rivers Small Recent Work (Hand Signed), 1965
Silkscreen on wove paper
Hand signed and dated "Rivers, 1965" in graphite p...
Category
1960s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen, Pencil
H 15.5 in W 17.5 in D 0.3 in
"Crescent Rose" Mixed Media Handmade Paper Watercolor Abstract by Bruce Weinberg
By Bruce Weinberg
Located in Soquel, CA
"Crescent Rose" Mixed Media Handmade Paper Watercolor Abstract by Bruce Weinberg
Soft lavenders, magentas and gray tones highlighted with purple thread and sheets of gold leaf mingle to create a soft and lovely abstract on handmade paper by California artist Bruce Weinberg (American, 1942-1994). Image is floated on a silk background.
Pencil signed and dated "Bruce Weinberg 1980" lower right.
Pencil signed title "Crescent Rose" lower left.
Displayed in a giltwood frame with spacer.
Image size: 24"H x 35"L.
Framed size: 31"H x 43"W x 2"D.
Bruce Weinberg was a long time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied Interior Design at the Philadelphia College of Art and Architectural Space Planning at Temple University. During the 1970s he studied printmaking and drawing at San Francisco's Fort Mason...
Category
1980s Modern Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Mixed Media, Handmade Paper
The Fabulous Moolah, World Champion Female Wrestler Figurative Screen Print
Located in Soquel, CA
The Fabulous Moolah, World Champion Female Wrestler Figurative Screen Print
Modern figurative print of world champion female wrestler Mary Lillian Ellison (American, 1923-2007), also known as The Fabulous Moolah. The artist of this print is unknown. Unsigned and undated. Presented in a modern frame with Plexiglass. Image size: 26”H x 20L".
During her lifetime, Moolah was lauded as a leading figure in women's professional wrestling and was considered one of the industry's greatest wrestlers. Moolah's first World Championship reign lasted over ten years. Moolah successfully defended the belt against the top female wrestlers in the world, such as Judy Grable and Donna Christanello, while also purporting to befriend some of the biggest celebrities of the day such as Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. She became the first woman to be inducted into the WWF Hall of Fame in 1995. In 1999, she became the oldest champion in the history of professional wrestling when she won the Women's Championship for a final time at age 76 in 1999.
Championships and Accomplishments:
Cauliflower Alley Club
Ladies Wrestling Award (1997)
National Wrestling Alliance
NWA Women's World Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Toni Rose
NWA World Women's Championship (5 times)
NWA Hall of Fame (Class of 2012)
Pro Wrestling...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen, Paper
H 26.25 in W 20.25 in D 1 in
IDENTITY CRISIS (BLACK)
By Ronnie Cutrone
Located in Aventura, FL
Screen print in colors on paper. Hand signed and numbered by Ronnie Cutrone. From the edition of 150.
Certificate of Authenticity included. Please do not hesitate to ask us any further questions. All reasonable offers will be considered.
Please note our gallery has more than 1 of this artwork in stock and the exact edition number you may receive may be different than pictured.
About the artist: Ronnie Cutrone (American, b.1948) is a Pop artist renowned for his vibrant, satirical paintings...
Category
1980s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Paper, Screen
Vintage Expressionist Portrait of a Man with a Bowtie Oil on Wood
By Michael Pauker
Located in Soquel, CA
Expressive portrait, a caricature of a man with bowtie by Michael Pauker (American, b. 1957). Unsigned, but was acquired with a collection of the artist's work. Another version of th...
Category
Late 20th Century American Modern Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Oil, Fiberboard
H 32 in W 24 in D 0.25 in
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (LOVE) Poster /// Robert Indiana Pop Art Blue Red
By Robert Indiana
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
Artist: (after) Robert Indiana (American, 1928-2018)
Title: "Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (LOVE)"
Year: 1972 (First edition)
Medium: Original Screenprint, Exhibition Poster on heav...
Category
1970s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Warhol Unlimited
By Andy Warhol
Located in New York, NY
Warhol Unlimited, 2015
Silkscreen on thin linen canvas backing
63 × 47 inches
Unframed
Exhibition posters are a great way to collect a piece of art history, from vintage prints adver...
Category
2010s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Canvas, Linen, Screen
1970s Abstract Figurative Framed Oil Painting, Modernist City Scene With Couple
Located in Denver, CO
1950s oil on board painting by George Cecil Carter portraying a modernist couple, thought to be Alfred Stieglitz & Georgia O'Keefe. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 20 ⅝ x 13 ½ x 1 ⅞ inches. Image sight size is 16 ⅞ x 9 ⅞ inches.
Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a complete condition report.
Provenance: Private Collection, Denver Colorado
Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote.
About the Artist:
George Cecil Carter was born in Oklahoma in 1908 and became a noted Colorado abstract expressionist alongside contemporaries including Al Wynne, Mary Chenoweth...
Category
1950s American Modern Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Oil, Board
H 20.5 in W 13.5 in D 1.75 in
Previously Available Items
Just for Laughs, by Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Long Island City, NY
Just For Laughs You're With Me Night and Day by Richard Merkin, American (1938–2009)
Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil
Edition of 62/250
Image Size: 18 x 24.25 inches
Size: ...
Category
1970s Contemporary Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Escape of Tony Biddle
By Richard Merkin
Located in Los Angeles, CA
RICHARD MERKIN
"THE ESCAPE OF TONY BIDDLE"
OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED
AMERICAN, DATED 1982
PROVENANCE: TERRY DINTENFASS GALLERY, NEW YORK
36 X 48 INCHES
Richard Merkin
1938-2009
Richard Merkin’s work conjures up scenes that evoke the raucous spirit of the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. In his witty, often eccentric illustrations and paintings, Merkin depicts movie stars, jazz musicians, sports heroes and literary impresarios co-mingling with more personal references. In his highly stylized approach to the figure, Merkin privileges color relationships, balance and juxtaposition over strictly literal descriptions of his subjects.
Merging his role as flaneur (connoisseur of city life) with his role as painter and social historian, Merkin retrieves lost cultural artifacts-a Turkish cigarette, a gangster, a bowler and generally 'things most people don't know about'-and reconstitutes their Jazz Age virtues on canvas in cubist, comic-laced landscapes of tropical color.
“This desire to know and celebrate people and events that others find devoid of significance”, according to Barbara Dayer Gallati, ” is a primary characteristic of Merkin’s art and the source of the irony that prevails within it. More often than not these esoteric fragments of “public” information reveal a taste for the bizarre or darker side of human existence, the sinister nature of which is relieved by the artist’s use of vibrant color and dynamic compositions.”
In agreement, Tom Wolfe writes, "The typical Merkin picture takes legendary American images-from baseball, the movies, fashion, Society, tabloid crime and scandal-and mixes them with his own autobiography, often with dream-">Richard Merkin was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1938, and held degrees from Syracuse University and the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1962-63 he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in Painting and, in 1975, The Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from The National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Merkin also has the dubious distinction of appearing on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, (back row, right of center).
Merkin began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1963 and remained there for nearly 42 years. During this time, he built his reputation as a fine artist in New York City. He is represented in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian Institution and the Whitney Museum as well as many others. Mr. Merkin had been a Contributing Editor for Vanity Fair from 1986 to 2008 and a regular contributor of illustrations to The New Yorker since 1988, as well as Harper’s and The New York Time’s Sunday Magazine. From 1988-1991 he wrote a monthly ">Merkin’s exhibitions in Hudson, NY began in 2000 at Kendall Art & Design, a gallery run by one of his former RISD students, Laura Battle...
Category
1980s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Cincinnati Underworld
By Richard Merkin
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Richard Merkin, American (1938 - 2009)
Title: Cincinnati Underworld
Year: circa 1970
Medium: Silkscreen, Signed and numbered in pencil
Edition: 170/250
Size: 20 in. x 16 in. ...
Category
1970s Contemporary Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
New Yorker Illustration Graffiti Artist Jean Michel Basquiat Portrait Pop Art
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
"The Graffiti Artist", Published in the New Yorker Magazine, 1985 Pastel and oil stick on paper Modernist portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Comes with exhibition catalog in which it ...
Category
Late 20th Century Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Paper, Oil Crayon, Oil Pastel
Klaus Kinski and Claudia Cardinale in Fitzcarraldo
By Richard Merkin
Located in Hudson, NY
Fitzcarraldo (1982) is a film written and directed by Werner Herzog starring Klaus Kinski and Claudia Cardinale. It portrays the real-life would-be rubbe...
Category
1980s Contemporary Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Paper, Oil Pastel
These Foolish Things Remind Me of You Pop Art Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces, An airline ticket to romantic places, Lyrics from these foolish things (covered by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Billie Holiday) This i...
Category
Late 20th Century Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Just for Laughs, Night and Day Pop Art Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
This is an original vintage signed silkscreen screenprint. edition of 250 signed and numbered.
Richard Marshall Merkin (1938-2009) was an American painter, illustrator and arts educa...
Category
Late 20th Century Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Art and perfume Tuxedo Pop Art Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
This is an original vintage unsigned screenprint. from the publisher. Every Day is D-Day Under the El, with a collage of ol potos of Paris France.
Richard Marshall Merkin (1938-2009)...
Category
1960s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Lash LaRue Pop Art 1969 Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
Poetry by J.D. REED Artwork by Richard Merkin screenprint in color, 1969, edition 22/50 Published by Bizzaro, Providence, R.I.
Richard Marshall Merkin (1938-2009) was an American ...
Category
1960s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Stepin Fetchit Pop Art 1969 Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
Poetry by J.D. REED Artwork by Richard Merkin screenprint in color, 1969, edition 22/50 Published by Bizzaro, Providence, R.I.
of African American interest for collectors.
Richard ...
Category
1960s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Marilyn Monroe Pop Art 1969 Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
Poetry by J.D. REED Artwork by Richard Merkin screenprint in color, 1969, edition 22/50 Published by Bizzaro, Providence, R.I.
Richard Marshall Merkin (1938-2009) was an American painter, illustrator and arts educator. Merkin's fascination with the 1920s and 1930s defined his art and shaped his identity as a professional dandy. Merkin traveled back in time as an artist, to the time of the interwar years, creating narrative scenes (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor) in bright colors of jazz musicians, film stars, writers, and sports heroes. Merkin was as well known for his painting and illustration work as he was for his eccentric collecting habits and his outré fashion sense. he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in Painting.
Merkin began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1963 and remained there for 42 years, during which time he built his reputation in New York. Some notable students Merkin taught at RISD include Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth...
Category
1960s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Prince Valiant Pop Art 1969 Color Screenprint Richard Merkin
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
Poetry by J.D. REED Artwork by Richard Merkin screenprint in color, 1969, edition 22/50 Published by Bizzaro, Providence, R.I.
Richard Marshall Merkin (1938-2009) was an American p...
Category
1960s Pop Art Richard Merkin Art
Materials
Screen
Richard Merkin art for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Richard Merkin art available for sale on 1stDibs. If you’re browsing the collection of art to introduce a pop of color in a neutral corner of your living room or bedroom, you can find work that includes elements of blue and other colors. You can also browse by medium to find art by Richard Merkin in screen print, canvas, crayon and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the Pop Art style. Not every interior allows for large Richard Merkin art, so small editions measuring 20 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Richard Bernstein, Brian Rice, and CLAYTON POND. Richard Merkin art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $700 and tops out at $12,000, while the average work can sell for $750.