| Joe Andoe | |
| Birth Date: | 5 December 1955[1] |
| Birth Place: | Tulsa, Oklahoma[2] |
| Education: | Master's degree Art |
| Alma Mater: | University of Oklahoma |
| Occupation: | Painter, author |
| Website: | Official Website of Joe Andoe |
Joe Andoe (born 1955) is an American artist, painter, and author. His works have been featured in exhibits internationally and also numerous museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.[2] He is the author of the book Jubilee City: A Memoir at Full Speed (P.S.), which is a memoir about his life.[3] [4] [5]
Andoe was born on December 5, 1955, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.[2] He has written extensively about his childhood, youth, and early career in his memoir, Jubilee City: A Memoir at Full Speed (P.S.), which was published in 2007.
Andoe loved to draw as a child but he never created any artwork until he was in college. Andoe first realized that painting could be his career when he was enrolled in community college studying agricultural business. He was taking an elective class in art history when he learned about artists such as Robert Smithson and Dennis Oppenheim.[6] He soon changed his major and eventually earned a Master's Degree in Art from the University of Oklahoma in 1981.[7]
Joe Andoe has been termed "une légende...un artiste à rebours des modes, aux sublimes oeuvres d'un clacissisme épuré frôlant l'abstraction," by French art magazine Transfuge.[8] His paintings have been described as "lean" and "roughly poetic,"[9] by art writer Deborah Solomon, who wrote in 2019 that recent exhibitions have offered:
a much-needed reminder of the breadth of his achievements and his startling relevance to the current scene. For starters, he’s an important forerunner of the photo-based realism that has become the default style among younger artists today. Moreover, his work can be read as a form of social critique, with its views of a robust America on the brink of disappearance....He is part of the generation that came of age after the dominance of Minimalism, which fetishized geometric forms and sleek surfaces and practically outlawed the sensual medium of oil-on-canvas. Andoe, officially, is a post-Minimalist whose work can at times resemble that of the New Image painters (such as Susan Rothenberg and Robert Moskowitz) who emerged in the ‘70s and returned figuration to painting.[9]
The New York Times lauded Andoe's "deadpan...conceptual humor" as it was displayed in his work Me Copying Cy Twombly copying Picasso, displayed in the 2023 "Echo of Picasso" group show honoring the artist's legacy.[10] For his part, Andoe has stated, "Since the late ’70s I have fancied myself a landscape painter, and a painter of the things that hang around on the landscape."[11]
Andoe had his first collection of stories published in 2003 by Open City Magazine. That same year he was published in Bomb[17] and Bald Ego. Andoe had earlier authored a comic-book-sized group of stories about his life that he distributed to friends and family. In 2005, Harper Collins asked him to create a longer, narrative version of that work. These became the inspiration for Jubilee City: A Memoir at Full Speed (P.S.) which was published in 2007 to critical acclaim.[18]
The New York Post review stated, "Reads like Denis Johnson mated with Jack Kerouac inside the Sistine Chapel."
Janet Maslin from the New York Times wrote, "this book is a natural offshoot of his art, combining cool understatement with brass-tacks candor."
Andoe currently lives in New York City. He has two children, a son (Sam) and a daughter (Lilly).[7]