Frances Barth

Barth was born in the Bronx, New York in 1946.Rose, Barbara. American Paintings: The Eighties, New York: Vista Press, 1979. In the 1960s, she attended Hunter College, earning a BFA and MA in painting and art history.Robins, Corinne. The Pluralist Era, American Art 1968-1981, New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Her early interests extended to sculpture (including studies with Tony Smith), movement and music; after taking a modern dance workshop at Hunter, she performed in works by Yvonne Rainer and Joan Jonas between 1968 and 1976.

Barth gained early recognition through several survey exhibitions in the 1970s. Curator Marcia Tucker included her in the Whitney Museum's 1972 painting annual and 1973 biennial; the shows led to a 1974 solo exhibition and representation with Susan Caldwell Gallery.Robins, Corinne. "Frances Barth," Art in America, September–October, p. 113.Lubell, Ellen. "Frances Barth at Susan Caldwell," Art in America, November 1983, p. 222–3. Barth also appeared in "American Painting: The Eighties" (1979, curated by Barbara Rose),Foster, Hal. [https://www.artforum.com/print/197909/a-tournament-of-rose-s-37944 "A Tournament of Rose's,"] Artforum, September 1979. Retrieved May 20, 2022. "American Paintings of the 1970s" (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1979),Cathcart, Linda. American Painting of the 1970s, Buffalo, NY: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1978. and focused group shows at the Contemporary Arts Museum HoustonBelloli, J. John Baldessari, Frances Barth, Richard Jackson, Barbara Munger, Gary Stephan, Houston, TX: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. [https://camh.org/event/john-baldessari-francis-barth-richard-jackson-barbara-munger-gary-stephen/ "John Baldessari, Frances Barth, Richard Jackson, Barbara Munger, Gary Stephan,"] Event. Retrieved May 20, 2022. and Corcoran Gallery of Art.Slade, Roy. Three New York Artists, Washington DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1973. In subsequent years, she exhibited at Tomoko Liguori,Smith, Roberta. "Galleries Paint a Brighter Picture for Women," The New York Times, April 14, 1989, p. C-1. Sundaram Tagore and Silas Von Morisse in New York, Jan Cicero Gallery (Chicago),Donnell, Sally. "Frances Barth, Martin Prekop," New Art Examiner, Summer, 1985, p. 59. and Marcia Wood (Atlanta),Cullum, Jerry. [https://www.artsatl.org/art-review-frances-barth-mernet-larson-painters-playing-spatial-tricks-at-marcia-wood-gallery/ "Frances Barth, Mernet Larsen play spatial tricks at Marcia Wood Gallery,"] ArtsATL, March 18, 2011. Retrieved May 19, 2022. among others.

File:Frances_Barth_SusanCaldwellGallery_1976.jpg

Since the early 1970s, Barth has explored the possibilities of meaning and metaphor within abstract paintings employing complex pictorial spaces and multiple points of view. Her work frequently combines flatness and volume, delicately indeterminate color, and a sense of unstable space and scale, often in long horizontal formats that require viewers to "read" (and re-read) them slowly, from left to right.

In her first major solo show (Susan Caldwell, 1974), Barth exhibited 10' to 16'-long horizontal paintings focused on color, movement and gravity, which evolved from common geometric shapes such as triangles, trapezoids and circles.Tucson Museum of Art. [https://tucsonmuseumofart.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/196F0874-4D18-11D9-BD9A-016751224300 Frances Barth], Collection. Retrieved May 19, 2022. The scumbled, scratchy forms functioned as both objects and atmosphere and suggested gently moving planes shifting places (e.g., Vermillion, 1973). By 1978, she was producing increasingly complex, mural-like arrays that Artforum described as "long, narrow, friezelike compositions of alternating circular and triangular forms, advancing, receding, stretching out beyond vision" (e.g., Mariner, 1977). The successive transformation of shapes established a sense of temporality and furthered the dichotomy between surface design and pictorial depth in her work.Minneapolis Institute of Art. [https://collections.artsmia.org/art/124049/untitled-frances-barth Untitled, 1977, Frances Barth], Art Collection. Retrieved May 19, 2022.

File:Frances_Barth_After_Midnight_1997.jpg

Beginning in the 1980s, Barth began to add referential forms and markers to her geometric shapes, incorporating new spatial and graphic languages—aerial mapping symbols, schematic diagrams, perspectival rendering, modeling, pure flatness—that provoked multiple of readings of the work.Wilkin, Karen. "At the Galleries," Partisan Review, Vol LIX, No. 1, 1992, p. 111. Art in America termed her 1983 exhibition a deliberate "stylistic leap" toward "geometric landscape" with a "deeper, decidedly illusionist space" inhabited by volumetric forms and softer colors (e.g., Seventh New Year, 1983).Handy, Ellen. "Frances Barth," Arts, June 1983, p. 35. In 1989, New York Times critic Roberta Smith wrote that Barth's "works have lately opened up into strangely angular landscapes, as abstract as they are imagistic and as gestural as they are structured." Writers have described these works as both linear "narratives" translating the slow movement of geologic time (e.g., the development of faults or forming of canyons) and as credible, panoramic depictions of landscapes and experiences—including light and time of day—achieved through a subtle and informed use of abstract color.Zimmer, William. [https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/28/nyregion/art-summit-constructed-in-jersey-city.html "Summit: Constructed in Jersey City,"] The New York Times, September 28, 1986, Sect. 11NJ, p. 28. Retrieved May 20, 2022.

In the 1990s, Barth incorporated classical Japanese influences into her paintings, while continuing to counterpoint Western illusionism against modernist flatness. The Eastern inspirations were borne out in the work's rudimentary landscape imagery, canted perspectives, balance of planar and linear elements, and muted, economical palettes of dusty color. Critics characterized the paintings as highly individualistic, puzzling, "thoughtful improvisations," noting their juxtaposition of decoration, carefully gridded organization and calligraphic spontaneity (e.g., L. Rides West, 1993).Bell, J. Bowyer. "Frances Barth," Review, May 1, 1997, p. 24–5. Art Papers described works such as sal.-v (1997) as "rapt with quietude, intent on describing [the] experience of a moment of recognition."

Reviewers of Barth's shows between 2006 and 2011 often focused on what Joan Waltemath called a "dialectical approach" mixing divergent syntactic codes, perspectives and unstable scales to produce works simultaneously evoking mysterious terrains, geologic schematics, and "near-minimal abstraction."Wilkin, Karen. "At the Galleries," The Hudson Review, Winter 2007.Wilkin, Karen. "Barth Ranges Wide," Art in America, October 2006, p. 186–7.Frank, Peter. "Haiku Review: Frances Barth," Huffington Post, April 23, 2011. David Brody described the collage-like interplay in Barth's 2017 exhibition (e.g., in Yellow Yellow, 2016 or Olive, 2017) as a place "precisely balanced between lucidity and mystery" in which "an absorbing world of imagination might also be a quirky transcription of observable facts." He made particular note of the interaction between her paintings and new sequential work (animations and a graphic novel), suggesting the latter works brought "into the open longstanding internal disputes" at the core of her practice, notably, "an implicit argument between abstraction and narrative, between stillness and forward motion."

Since 2007, Barth has created two animations (End of the Day, End of the Day, 2007; and Jonnie in the Lake, 2016),Film Freeway. [https://filmfreeway.com/798705 Jonnie in the Lake]. Retrieved May 20, 2022. two documentaries (Regina, 2013, about painter Regina Bogat; and The Audition, 2018), and two narrative short films (No No Boy, 2015; and Dreaming Tango, 2020).Film Freeway. [https://filmfreeway.com/DreamingTango Dreaming Tango]. Retrieved May 20, 2022.Wilkin, Karen. [https://hudsonreview.com/2018/01/at-the-galleries-33/ "At the Galleries,"] The Hudson Review, January 2018. Retrieved May 20, 2022. In 2017, she published the graphic novel Ginger Smith and Billy Gee, which featured settings derived from her paintings.Barth, Frances. [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/990065904 Ginger Smith and Billy Gee], Frances Barth, 2016. Retrieved May 20, 2022. Barth was a guest panelist in a 1975 episode of Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. featuring Tom Wolfe, discussing his then-recent book The Painted Word.

Barth has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1977), awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (1995)Joan Mitchell Foundation. [https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/frances-barth Frances Barth], Supported Artists. Retrieved May 19, 2022. and American Academy of Arts and Letters (1999, 2004),American Academy of Arts and Letters. [https://artsandletters.org/awards/ "Awards."] Retrieved May 20, 2022. and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (1974),National Endowment for the Arts. Annual Report 1974, p. 109. Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation (1993), Anonymous Was a Woman (2006) and Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2017),Pollock-Krasner Foundation. [https://www.pkf-imagecollection.org/artist/Frances_Barth/works/9715 Frances Barth], Artists. Retrieved May 19, 2022. among others. In 2011, she was elected to the National Academy of Design.National Academy of Design. [https://nationalacademy.emuseum.com/people/4171/frances-barth Frances Barth], The Academy. Retrieved May 19, 2022.

Her work belongs to the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art,The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/632965?searchField=ArtistCulture&sortBy=Relevance&ft=Frances+Barth&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=1 Hakuryo, 1981, Frances Barth], Collection. Retrieved June 8, 2022.The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/482268?searchField=ArtistCulture&sortBy=Relevance&ft=Frances+Barth&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=2 Color, 1978, Frances Barth], Collection. Retrieved June 8, 2022.The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/486185?searchField=ArtistCulture&sortBy=Relevance&ft=Frances+Barth&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=3 Untitled, Number 500, 1979, Frances Barth], Collection. Retrieved June 8, 2022.The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/482259?searchField=ArtistCulture&sortBy=Relevance&ft=Frances+Barth&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=4 Vessel, 1978, Frances Barth], Collection. Retrieved June 8, 2022. Whitney Museum, Akron Art Institute, Albright-Knox Art Gallery,Albright-Knox Art Gallery. [https://www.albrightknox.org/person/frances-barth Frances Barth], Person. Retrieved May 19, 2022. Cincinnati Art Museum,Cincinnati Art Museum. Cincinnati Museum Association Annual Report 2020, Cincinnati, OH: Cincinnati Art Museum, p. 108. Dallas Museum of Fine Art,Dallas Museum of Art. [https://collections.dma.org/artwork/5203070 Bowery Two, Frances Barth], Artwork. Retrieved May 20, 2022. Davis Museum,Davis Museum at Wellesley College. [https://davis.emuseum.com/objects/5079/untitled?ctx=8165ef7653e71569437e5646c4da67d918144e21&idx=0 Untitled, Frances Barth], Objects. Retrieved May 20, 2022. Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art,Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. [https://emuseum.cornell.edu/objects/31276/henning?ctx=a9e5e66453ce8a24d6a221033de58d5c178306b4&idx=0 Henning, Frances Barth], Objects. Retrieved May 20, 2022. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Newark Museum, and Tucson Museum of Art, among others.

{{Reflist}}

• [https://www.francesbarth.com/index.php Frances Barth website]
• [https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/frances-barth/ Frances Barth] Guggenheim Fellowship page
• [https://www.silasvonmorisse.com/artists/frances-barth Frances Barth] Silas Von Morisse Gallery

{{authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barth, Frances}}

Category:20th-century American women painters

Category:20th-century American painters

Category:21st-century American women painters

Category:21st-century American painters

Category:American abstract painters

Category:Hunter College alumni

Category:Painters from New York City

Category:American art educators

Category:1946 births

Category:Living people