Insider Focus: Making, Breaking, and Remaking Paintings

Floor 3, Theater

Individual, Dual, and Friend Members

During this talk, artist and educator Mark Joshua Epstein will answer the question “What is a painting?” by breaking down the medium’s material components: pigment, binding medium such as oil or liquid acrylic plastic, and support, traditionally but not always stretched canvas. Works from the Whitney’s collection and from the current exhibition Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again will serve as case studies to illustrate the traditional and unconventional ways that artists manipulate these components. For example, Warhol extensively used silkscreen and other printmaking techniques in his paintings. The practices of painters such as Helen Frankenthaler, Alvin Loving, and Sam Gilliam—who feature in the upcoming collection display Spilling Over: Painting Color in the 1960s—offer additional examples of boundary-defying innovations, from shaped or unstretched canvases to unusual approaches to pigment and binding.

Saturday, March 16
2 pm

Sunday, March 24
12 pm

Mark Joshua Epstein is a visual artist, educator, and independent curator based in New York. Venues where he has had recent solo exhibitions include Handwerker Gallery at Ithaca College; Vane Gallery in Newcastle, England; and Biquini Wax in Mexico City. Epstein has participated in numerous residency programs, including Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony, and the MacDowell Colony.

Individual, Dual, and Friend members are invited to this event. For Individual members, the invitation is for one and for Dual and Friend members, the invitation is for two.