Barbara Rose | |
|---|---|
| Born | Barbara Ellen Rose June 11, 1936 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Died | December 25, 2020 (aged 84) Concord, New Hampshire, U.S. |
| Years active | 1963–2020 |
| Spouse(s) |
Richard Du Boff
(m. 1959–1960)Jerry Leiber Richard Du Boff |
| Children | 2 |
Barbara Ellen Rose (June 11, 1936 – December 25, 2020) was an American art historian, art critic, curator, college professor, and filmmaker. Rose's criticism focused on 20th-century American art, particularly minimalism and abstract expressionism. "ABC Art", her influential[citation needed] 1965 essay, outlined minimalist art.
Barbara Ellen Rose was born on June 11, 1936,[1] in a Jewish family in Washington, D.C. to Lillian Rose (née Sand) and Ben Rose.[2] Her father owned a liquor store, and her mother was a homemaker.[3][4] She graduated from Calvin Coolidge High School in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington D.C.[5]
At the age of 16, Rose enrolled at Smith College, but after a year transferred to Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in 1957.[6] She completed her graduate studies at Columbia University. During this period, she received a Fulbright scholarship to visit Pamplona, Spain, in 1961 which sparked a lasting interest in Spanish culture and art.[3][7] In 1984, she received a PhD in the history of art from Columbia University,[8] where she studied with Meyer Schapiro, Julius S. Held, and Rudolf Wittkower.[5] The subject of her thesis was 16th-century Spanish painting;[3] the university accepted "various books by Rose, published between 1970–1983" as her dissertation.[9][1]
Through cinematographer Michael Chapman, Rose was introduced to many New York artists, including Carl Andre and Frank Stella.[7]
Rose started her career in the mid-1960s, writing on art criticism working with artists including formalist art historian Michael Fried.[3] From 1971 until 1977, she was an art critic for the New York magazine. In 1972, she received a Front Page Award for her article "Artists with Convictions", which described the art program for inmates of the Manhattan House of Detention for Men.[10] She later worked as an instructor at a New York City correctional facility.[11]
From 1981 until 1985, Rose was a senior curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she curated shows including Miró in America and Fernand Léger and the Modern Spirit: An Avant-Garde Alternative to Non-Objective Art, both in 1982.[12] In 1983, she curated the first Lee Krasner retrospective, which exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.[7] Rose frequently wrote on Krasner's work, describing him as "one of the seminal forces among the Abstract Expressionists";[13] in a 1977 article entitled "Lee Krasner and the Origins of Abstract Expressionism", she argued that he had been unjustly overlooked by critics.[14]
Rose taught at Hunter College, Sarah Lawrence College, University of California, Irvine, University of California, San Diego and Yale University.[7]
In October 1965, Rose published the essay "ABC Art" in Art in America, in which she describes the fundamental characteristics of what was later known as minimal art. ("ABC art" was one of Rose's suggested names for the movement; she also suggested "reductive art" and "object sculpture".[15]) "ABC Art" considers the diverse roots of minimalism in the work of Kasimir Malevich and Marcel Duchamp, as well as the choreography of Merce Cunningham, the art criticism of Clement Greenberg, the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and the novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet.[16] She regarded Ad Reinhardt as a progenitor of minimalism, and not a minimalist proper.[17] In examining the historical roots of minimal art in 1960s America, Rose drew a distinction between Malevich's "search for the transcendental, universal, absolute" and Duchamp's "blanket denial of the existence of absolute values".[18] Rose further argued in "ABC Art" that minimalist sculpture was at its best when it was inhospitable to its audience: "difficult, hostile, awkward and oversize".[19]
Rose grouped some 1960s artists as closer to Malevich, some as closer to Duchamp, and some as between the two; she argued that the work of some minimalists constituted a "synthesis" of Malevich and Duchamp.[20] Closer to Malevich were Walter Darby Bannard, Larry Zox, Robert Huot, Lyman Kipp, Richard Tuttle, Jan Evans, Ronald Bladen, Anne Truitt. Closer to Duchamp were Richard Artschwager and Andy Warhol. Between Malevich and Duchamp she placed Robert Morris, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Dan Flavin. Her conclusion was that minimal art is both transcendental and negative:
The art I have been talking about is obviously a negative art of denial and renunciation. Such protracted asceticism is normally the activity of contemplatives or mystics...Like the mystic, in their work these artists deny the ego and the individual personality, seeking to evoke, it would seem, the semihypnotic state of blank unconsciousness.[21]
She also contrasted minimal art with Pop Art:
...if Pop Art is the reflection of our environment, perhaps the art I have been describing is its antidote, even if it is a hard one to swallow.[22]
Rose was married four times to three men.[24] In 1959, she married Richard Du Boff, an economic historian;[3] the marriage ended in divorce after a year.[24] In October 1961 in London, Rose married the artist Frank Stella;[3][24] they had two children[4] and divorced in 1969. Rose then married the lyricist Jerry Leiber,[12] which ended in divorce. Rose then remarried Du Boff.[5]
Rose died on December 25, 2020 in Concord, New Hampshire, from breast cancer.[4][3][25] She was 84.
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