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Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
250 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles
213-626-6222
The Art of Richard Tuttle
March 4-July 30, 2007

The Art of Richard Tuttle features more than 200 works spanning the artist’s four-decade career, making it the most comprehensive presentation of his work to date. The exhibition covers approximately 15 bodies of work from the mid-1960s to the present in a full range of categories, including sculpture, assemblage, works on paper, artist books, and furniture. Tuttle’s distinctive individual practice and its relation to American art since 1965 will be emphasized, articulating the trajectory of his work and celebrating his singular achievements. Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in close collaboration with the artist, this exhibition is curated by SFMOMA Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture Madeleine Grynsztejn.

This exhibition is generously supported by The Henry Luce Foundation, Mimi and Peter Haas, the Edward E. Hills Fund, Helen and Charles Schwab, and Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro. Additional support has been provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Shirley Ross Sullivan and Charles Sullivan, the Irving Stenn Family, the Kadima Foundation, the Frances R. Dittmer Family Foundation, Jeanne and Michael Klein, Tim Nye and the MAT Charitable Foundation, Craig Robins, Louisa Stude Sarofim, Sperone Westwater, Joseph Holtzman, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, and Carolyn and Preston Butcher. Support for the catalogue has been provided by Anthony and Celeste Meier, the Neisser Family Fund, and Marion Boulton Stroud.

In an American society where bigger is better, Richard Tuttle's work is practically subversive, make a philosophical and political stand for the small qand percepturally nuanced, His founding insight — that in an expanding universe there must be an equal and opposite counterforce has often led him to create piedes that are so small, they almost disappear.

Paradoxically, sometimes Tuttle's works are so condensed that their presence fills the entire surrounding space. The New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman comments: "Is his work small? Only in terms of the size of his panels and the marks he makes, because it incorporates the entire gallery as sculptural space: it takes into account the relationship of the objects on the walls to the rooms they occupy and how people move through those rooms. It is really very large." Tuttle himself has characterized his tiny artworks as an innocent answer to the q1uestion of what those enormous gallery walls might be good for.

Richard Dean Tuttle (born 12 July 1941 in Rahway, New Jersey) is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, subtle, intimate works. His art deals with issues of scale and the classic problems of line.

Tuttle studied at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and after moving to New York in 1963 he spent a semester at the Cooper Union and worked at the Betty Parsons Gallery. One year after taking a job as an assistant at Betty Parsons, she gave him his first show.

Tuttle's reputation as a master was secure in Europe from early on, though acceptance of his work in his home country was slower. His works on paper are considered seminal works in American art. Tuttle had a survey exhibition in 1975 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibit was controversial and the show's curator, Marcia Tucker, lost her job as a result[citation needed] (Tuttle's work, however, is in the collection of the Whitney today). Hilton Kramer, then art critic for The New York Times wrote, referring to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's dictum "less is more", "in Mr. Tuttle's work, less is unmistakably less...One is tempted to say, art is concerned, less has never been as less than this."

Tuttle is often referred to as an "artist's artist" and, as such, his work has been influential to a generation of contemporary artists such as Kiki Smith, Jim Hodges, David Hammons, Michael Oman-Reagan, Tom Friedman and Jessica Stockholder. He was a very close friend of minimalist painter Agnes Martin until her death in 2004.

In 2005, Tuttle had a major retrospective spanning his 40 year career at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The exhibit traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in November, 2005. He is represented by Sperone Westwater in New York City and by Galerie Schmela in Dusseldorf and by Annemarie Verna Galerie in Zurich . He lives and works in New York City and New Mexico. He is married to the poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.

He has been the recipient of many awards for his work including the 74th American Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago Biennial Prize, the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, New York, and the Aachen Art Prize, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Germany.

Richard Tuttle, 20 Pearls (8), 2003, Acrylic on museum board and archival foamcore, 19-3/4 x 16-1/4", Collection Byron R. Meyer, San Francisco, Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York.

Richard Tuttle, Village III, Sculpture, 2004, Stainless steel, rebar and industrial oil paint, 60 x 84 x 24-1/2", Collection Mr. and Mrs. Peter Shaw, Philadelphia, Pennsyolvania, Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York.

Richard Tuttle, Village I, Sculpture I, 2004, Steel, iron, wire, piñon and juniper wood, 60 x 16 x 31", Collection Deedie and Rusty Rose, Dallas, Texas, Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York.