Cynthia Carlson Explained

Cynthia Carlson
Birth Place:	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Known For:	Painting
Alma Mater:	School of the Art Institute of Chicago Pratt Institute
Movement:	Pattern and Decoration

Cynthia Carlson (born 1942) is an American visual artist, living and working in New York.

Personal life and education

Carlson was born in 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated from Kelvyn Park High School in Chicago and then attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her BFA in 1965. She moved to New York City and attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, graduating with her MFA in 1967.^[1] She is married to Robert Gino Bertoletti.

Career

In the 1960s, Carlson's art was influenced by the work of The Hairy Who and Chicago Imagists artists in Chicago. During the 1970s, she was a pioneer of the "Pattern and Decoration" group in New York City, in which the Feminist movement played an important role. Mainly a painter, her work has evolved within a number of different stylistic concerns including installation, sculpture, and public art commissions.

Carlson's career has included nine solo museum exhibitions: Homage to the Academy Building,^[2] Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1979), Philadelphia, PA; Insideout Oberlin,^[3] Allen Memorial Museum (1980), Oberlin, OH; Eastlake Then and Now,^[4] Hudson River Museum (1981), Yorkers, NY; Four False Facades,^[5] Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (1981), Winston-Salem, NC; Currents,^[6] Milwaukee Art Museum (1982), Milwaukee, WI; Picture That In Miami,^[7] Lowe Art Museum (1982), Coral Gables, FL; The Monument Series,^[8] Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Queens Museum,^[9] Flushing, NY; and The Dog Show,^[10] Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY, NY and forty-seven one person gallery exhibitions in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, including Hundred Acres Gallery^[11] (1975), New York, NY; The Gingerbread House,^[12] Graduate Center (1977), CUNY, NY; Pam Adler Gallery^[13] (1979, 1981, 1983), New York, NY; Vietnam: Sorry About That,^[14] University Art Galleries, Wright State University (1988), Dayton, OH; and Freedman Gallery^[15] (1989), Albright College, Reading, PA; Over Time,^[16] Essex Flowers Gallery (2018), New York, NY.

Her work was included in numerous group exhibitions and biennials in museums and galleries in North America and Europe, including Twenty-Six Contemporary Women Artists,^[17] Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (1971), Ridgefield, CN, curated by Lucy Lippard; Extraordinary Realities,^[18] Whitney Museum of American Art (1973), New York, NY, curated by Robert M. Doty; Pattern Painting,^[19] P.S.1 (1977), Long Island City, NY; Contemporary Women: Consciousness & Content,^[20] Brooklyn Museum (1977), NY, curated by Joan Semmel; Rooms,^[21] Hayden Gallery (1981), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. Three rooms exhibit with Richard Haas and Richard Artschwager; War and Memory: In the Aftermath of Vietnam,^{[22] [23]} Washington Project for the Arts (1987), Washington, D.C.; Pattern & Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American Art, 1975-1985,^[24] Hudson River Museum (2007), Yonkers, curated by Anne Swartz; That Was Then, This Is Now, CUE Art Foundation (2010), New York, NY, curated by Robert Storr & Irving Sandler; and Pattern, Crime & Decoration,^{[25] [26]} Museum of Contemporary Art (2018-2019), Geneva, Switzerland, and Le Consortium, Dijon, France, curated by Franck Gautherot and Seungduk Kim.

Her public commissions include, LA: City of Angels^[27] (1993), Los Angeles Metro Rail System through the Los Angeles County Transportation Art for the Rail Transit Program, Los Angeles, CA and Gingerbread House^[28] (1977), Artpark, in Lewiston, NY, a 13-feet high life size sculpture.

She taught for 40 years at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and at the Queens College, CUNY, where she is professor emerita. She served on the Artist Advisory Committee of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation^[29] and on the Advisory Committee of the Ree Morton Estate.^[30] She has lived in Italy for a year at a time on several occasions, as well as traveling extensively in Europe and elsewhere.

In the early 1970s, for several years, she traveled throughout the United States documenting Environmental Folk Art^[31] lectured extensively on the material. In 2012, she donated the entire collection of visuals and documents to the L'Art Brut Museum^[32] in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Public Collections

• Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[33] New York, NY
• Guggenheim Museum,^[34] New York, NY
• New Museum, New York, NY
• Brooklyn Museum,^[35] Brooklyn, NY
• Albright-Knox Art Gallery,^[36] Buffalo, NY
• Philadelphia Museum of Art,^[37] Philadelphia, PA
• Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
• Allentown Art Museum,^[38] Allentown, PA
• Museum of Contemporary Art,^[39] Chicago, IL
• The Art Institute of Chicago,^[40] Chicago, IL
• Allen Memorial Art Museum,^[41] Oberlin, OH
• University of Colorado Art Museum,^[42] Boulder, CO
• Milwaukee Art Museum,^[43] Milwaukee, WI
• Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum,^[44] Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
• Polk Museum of Art,^[45] Lakeland, FL
• San Antonio Museum of Art,^[46] San Antonio, TX

Awards

• 2020 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award^[47]
• 1993 Foundation Award, Residency for Study And Conference Center, Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Center,^[48] Bellagio, Italy
• 1975, 1978, 1987 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship^[49]
• 1977 Natural Heritage Trust Artist-in-Residence Grant, Artpark, Lewiston, NY^{[50] [51]}
• 1976 The MacDowell Colony Fellowship^[52]

Further reading

• Broude, Norma and Mary Garrard, eds. Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact.^[53] NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994
• Brown, Betty Ann and Arlene Raven. Exposures: Women & Their Art.^[54] Pasadena, CA: New Sage Press, 1989
• Gould, Claudia & Valerie Smith, ed. 5000 Artists Return to Artists Space: 25 Years.^[55] NY: Artists Space; Board Edition, 1998
• Jensen, Robert and Patricia Conway, eds. Ornamentalism: The New Decorativeness in Architecture & Design^[56] . NY: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1982
• Johnson, Ellen H., ed. American Artists on Art from 1940 to 1980.^[57] NY: Harper & Row, Icon Editions, 1982
• Lippard, Lucy. From The Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art.^[58] NY: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1976
• Lippard, Lucy. The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Feminist Essays on Art^[59] . NY: The New Press, 1995
• Robins, Corinne. The Pluralist Era: American Art, 1968 -1981.^[60] NY: Harper & Row, 1984
• Rubin, David. Cynthia Carlson: Installations, 1979-1989 (A Decade, More or Less).^[61] Reading, PA: Freedman Gallery, Albright College, 1989
• Sandler, Irving. Art of the Postmodern Era, From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s.^[62] NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1996
• Sandler, Irving. A Sweeper-Up After Artists: A Memoir.^[63] NY: Thames & Hudson, 2003
• Taylor, Brandon. Avant- Garde and After: Rethinking Art Now^[64] . NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995
• Van Wagner, Judith. Women Shaping Art: Profiles in Power.^[65] NY: Praeger, 1984
• Westbrook, Adele. A Creative Legacy: A History of the National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Artists’ Fellowship Program.^[66] NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001

Notes and References

1. Book: Handy, Amy . Making Their Mark. Women Artists Move into the Mainstream, 1970-1985 . Randy Rosen . Catherine C. Brower . Artist's Biographies - Cynthia Carlson . Abbeville Press . 1989 . 242 . 0-89659-959-0 . https://archive.org/details/makingtheirmarkw0000unse/page/242 .
2. Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College . 1980 . NEW VOICES I: Cynthia Carlson . Bulletin . 7.
3. Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College . 1980 . "NEW VOICES I: Cynthia Carlson" . Bulletin.
4. Book: Pattern and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American Art, 1975-1985 . Hudson River Museum . 2007 . 5.
5. Book: Cynthia Carlson : Wake Forest University, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art [and] North Carolina School of the Arts artist-in-residence, Four false facades : a mixed media installation, Porch Gallery/SECCA, 3 October through 22 November 1981 : sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation ]. Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art . 1981 . Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States.
6. Book: Currents 1: Cynthia Carlson . Milwaukee Art Museum . 1982.
7. Web site: Brown . Melissa . June 28, 2018 . CYNTHIA CARLSON – BENDING THE GRID WITH WIT . oneriverschool.com.
8. Web site: Buffalo AKG Art Museum . Albright-Knox Art Gallery Digital Assets Collection and Archives .
9. Web site: Cynthia Carlson .
10. Book: Cynthia Carlson paintings : the dog show . Neuberger Museum of Art . 1999.
11. Perrone . Jeff . January 1977 . Cynthia Carlson: HUNDRED ACRES GALLERY . Artforum . 60.
12. DeAk . Edit . March 1978 . "Reviews: Cynthia Carlson, C.U.N.Y Graduate Center Mall" . Artforum . 68.
13. Web site: Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Pam Adler Gallery records . sirismm.si.edu.
14. News: Allen . Henry . October 4, 1987 . VIETNAM . The Washington Post.
15. Book: Rubin, David S . Cynthia Carlson: Installations 1979-1989 (A Decade, More or Less) . Freedman Gallery, Albright College . 1989 . Reading, Pennsylvania. 9780941972086 .
16. Web site: CYNTHIA CARLSON, Over Time, May 25 - June 24 2018 . essexflowers.us.
17. Web site: Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists . thealdrich.org.
18. Book: Doty, Robert M. . Extraordinary Realities . Whitney Museum of American Art . 1973 . 31.
19. Web site: Pattern Painting, Nov 14–Dec 4, 1977, MoMA PS1 . www.moma.org.
20. Web site: Contemporary Women: Consciousness & Content . www.brooklynmuseum.org.
21. Web site: Rooms,1981, MIT List Visual Arts Center . listart.mit.edu. 13 January 2022 .
22. Book: War and memory in the aftermath of Vietnam . Washington Project for the Arts . 1987 . Washington, D.C. . English.
23. News: Gamarekian . Barbara . September 14, 1987 . Remembering Vietnam . 16 . The New York Times .
24. Book: Swartz, Anne . Pattern and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American Art, 1975-1985 . Hudson River Museum . 2007 . 9780943651354.
25. Web site: Pattern, Crime & Decoration . www.leconsortium.fr.
26. Web site: Pattern, Decoration & Crime . www.mamco.ch.
27. Web site: CYNTHIA CARLSON, LA: City of Angels, 1993, Union Station: B Line (Red)/D Line (Purple) west entrance . www.unionstationla.com.
28. DeAk . Edit . March 1978 . Reviews: Cynthia Carlson, C.U.N.Y Graduate Center Mall. . . 68.
29. Heller, Maxwell. "A Day with The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Space Program." Brooklyn Rail (November 2007) https://brooklynrail.org/2007/11/artseen/a-day-with-the-marie-walsh-sharpe-founda
30. Book: Kraczon, Kate . THE PLANT THAT HEALS May Also Poison . Institute of Contemporary Art University of Pennsylvania . 2018 . 978-0-88454-147-9 . 18–65.
31. Carlson . Cynthia . October 1977 . Grassroots Art in America . . 64–68.
32. Web site: Collection De l'Art Brut Lausanne . ART BRUT XXL - June 28 through September 22, 2019 . artbrut.ch.
33. Web site: "Easy Keyhole", 1980, Cynthia Carlson . www.metmuseum.org.
34. Web site: Artist Talk: Joyce Kozloff in Conversation with Cynthia Carlson, Essex Flowers Gallery . www.dcmooregallery.com.
35. Web site: Brooklyn Museum . 2022-11-15 . www.brooklynmuseum.org.
36. Web site: Search the Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum . 2022-11-15 . buffaloakg.org.
37. Web site: Woman's Pajamas: Top, Trousers, and Sash . 2022-11-15 . philamuseum.org . en.
38. Web site: Timed In Time, 1974, Allentown Art Museum Collection . 2022-11-15 . collections.allentownartmuseum.org.
39. Web site: Untitled, 1983, MCA Collection . 2022-11-15 . mcachicago.org.
40. News: Cynthia Carlson The Art Institute of Chicago . en . The Art Institute of Chicago . 2022-11-15.
41. Web site: Fragment from "Insideout Oberlin", Allen Memorial Art Museum Collections . 2022-11-15 . allenartcollection.oberlin.edu.
42. Web site: University of Colorado Bolder Art Museum Collection . 2022-11-15 . 5065.sydneyplus.com.
43. Web site: Collection Milwaukee Art Museum . 2022-11-15 . collection.mam.org.
44. Web site: Squiggles, 1974, Broad Museum Collection . 2022-11-15 . collections.broadmuseum.msu.edu.
45. Web site: Belcher . Matt . Cynthia Carlson . 2022-11-15 . Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College . en-US.
46. Web site: Short Job, 1976, San Antonio Museum of Art Collection . 2022-11-15 . sanantonio.emuseum.com.
47. News: May 12, 2020 . POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION AWARDS NEARLY $3 MILLION IN GRANTS TO ARTISTS AND NONPROFITS . Artforum .
48. January 24, 1994 . RF Annual Report - 1994 - The Rockefeller Foundation . The Rockefeller Foundation . 101.
49. Book: Adele, Westbrook. A Creative Legacy: A history of the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Program 1966 - 1995.. 2001. Abrams. New York, NY. 0-8109-4170-8. registration.
50. Web site: Natural Heritage Trust.
51. Web site: Major Project Artists 1974-1991 . www.artpark.net.
52. Web site: Cynthia Carlson - MacDowell fellowship: 1976 .
53. Web site: Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970 s History and Impact - Broude, Norma; Garrard, Mary D. . 2022-11-15 . www.abebooks.com . en.
54. Web site: Exposures : women & their art / text by Betty Ann Brown & Arlene Raven ; photographs by Kenna Love ; foreword by Alessandra Comini . 2022-11-15 . Smithsonian Institution . en.
55. Web site: 5000 Artists Return to Artists Space 25 Years - AbeBooks . 2022-11-15 . www.abebooks.com . en.
56. Book: Jensen . Robert . Ornamentalism : the new decorativeness in architecture & design . Conway . Patricia . 1982 . New York : C.N. Potter : Distributed by Crown Publishers . Internet Archive . 978-0-517-54383-2.
57. Book: Johnson, Ellen H. . American artists on art from 1940 to 1980 . 1982 . New York : Harper & Row . Internet Archive . 978-0-06-433426-6.
58. Book: Lippard, Lucy R. . From the center : feminist essays on women's art . 1976 . New York : Dutton . Internet Archive . 978-0-525-47427-2.
59. Book: Lippard, Lucy R. . The pink glass swan : selected essays on feminist art . 1995 . New York : New Press . Internet Archive . 978-1-56584-213-7.
60. Book: Robins, Corinne . The pluralist era : American art, 1968-1981 . 1984 . New York : Harper & Row . Internet Archive . 978-0-06-438448-3.
61. Book: Rubin, David S. . Cynthia Carlson: Installations 1979-1989 (A Decade, More or Less) . 1989 . Freedman Gallery, Albright College . 978-0-941972-08-6 . Reading, Pennsylvania.
62. Book: Sandler, Irving . Art of the postmodern era : from the late 1960s to the early 1990s . 1996 . New York : IconEditions . Internet Archive . 978-0-06-438509-1.
63. Book: Sandler, Irving . A sweeper-up after artists : a memoir . 2003 . New York, N.Y. : Thames & Hudson . Internet Archive . 978-0-500-23813-4.
64. Book: Avant Garde and After: Rethinking Art Now by Brandon Taylor . en.
65. Book: Collischan, Judy . Women shaping art: profiles of power . 1984 . Praeger . 978-0-03-070757-5 . New York.
66. Book: Westbrook, Adele . A Creative Legacy: A History of the National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Artists' Fellowship Program . Harry N. Abrams, Inc. . 2001 . 978-0810941700.