Jo Baer
Encyclopedia
Josephine Gail "Jo" Baer, born Josephine Kleinberg August 7, 1929, is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 artist, whose works are associated with minimalist art. She began exhibiting her work at the Fischbach Gallery, New York, and other venues for contemporary art in the mid-1960s.

Life and work

Before relocating to New York City (1950–53) to work for a master's degree in psychology at the New School for Social Research, she lived on a kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...

 in Israel for six months.

Baer's early work was informed by an admiration of the Abstract Expressionists — Gorky
Arshile Gorky
Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced of the Armenian genocide.-Early life:...

, Motherwell
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston....

, and Rothko
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...

 — a movement she later rejected, in favor of painterly hard-edge work
Hard-edge painting
Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting.-History of the term:The term was...

. Baer notes that the early Minimalists called their painterly hard-edge painting
Hard-edge painting
Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting.-History of the term:The term was...

s "idiot work," since they were made on saw horses, rather than on the wall. Knowing what she needed to do, she just got it done.

Having grown up in Seattle, Baer's early paintings employed the black, red, green and beige (or sand) familiar to Northwest Indian Kwakiutl
Kwakiutl
The term Kwakiutl, historically applied to the entire Kwakwaka'wakw ethno-linguistic group of originally 28 tribes, comes from one of the Kwakwaka'wakw tribes, the Kwagu'ł or Kwagyeulth, at Fort Rupert, with whom Franz Boas did most of his anthropological work and whose Indian Act Band government...

 totem poles. In 1962, she began the series of paintings that dealer Richard Bellamy later named the "Koreans."

Although Barbara Rose
Barbara Rose
Barbara Rose is an American art historian and art critic. She was educated at Smith College, Barnard College and Columbia University. She was married to artist Frank Stella between 1961 and 1969...

 never mentioned Baer in her influential 1965 article ABC Art in Art in America
Art in America
Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...

, a photograph of Baer's work illustrating Rose's article inspired gallery director Donald Droll to offer her a solo exhibition at Fischbach Gallery in 1966. Baer's hard-edge paintings were included in notable Minimalist exhibitions including Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.-Early life and career:...

's Eleven Artists (1964) at Kaymar Gallery, Dwan Gallery's 10 (1966), Lawrence Alloway
Lawrence Alloway
Lawrence Alloway was an English art critic and curator who worked in the United States from the 1960s. In the 1950s he was a leading member of the Independent Group in the UK and in the 1960s was an influential writer and curator in the US...

's Systemic Painting (1966) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...

 and Art in Series (1967) at the Finch College
Finch College
Finch College was a baccalaureate women's college located in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It began as a finishing school for wealthy young women and later evolved into a liberal arts college...

  Museum. In 1969, she began experimenting with wraparound paintings, object-like paintings with diagonal and curved forms that are known as the Radiator paintings (1970–1974), since they hang on the wall just above the floor.

Baer, one course shy of a master's degree in psychology, demonstrated her continued interest in this material in her 1970 essay regarding the optical illusion
Optical illusion
An optical illusion is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a perception that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source...

s known as Mach bands
Mach bands
Mach bands is an optical illusion named after the physicist Ernst Mach. The illusion consists of light or dark stripes that are perceived next to the boundary between two regions of an image that have different lightness gradients .-Explanation:The Mach bands effect is due to the spatial...

 (named after the physicist Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves...

), at this time her paintings were very much about the edges of the canvas. To get over stage fright, she took dance classes with Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental. Her work is classified as minimalist art.- Early life :...

 and Lucinda Childs
Lucinda Childs
Lucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece...

, eventually performing Rainer's "Trio" at the Lincoln Center Library. Other dancers she befriended include Judy Dunn, Meredith Monk
Meredith Monk
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...

 and Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown is a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer.Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and received a B.A. degree in dance from Mills College in 1958. Brown later received a D.F.A. from Bates College in 2000. For several summers she studied with Louis Horst at the American Dance...

."

Following her 1975 mid-career survey of Minimalist works at the Whitney Museum
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

 in New York, she moved to Ireland where she worked with images and a sensual color palette. During this period, Baer used erotic imagery found in early cave paintings, Paleolithic sculptures
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of...

 and fertility objects
Venus figurines
Venus figurines is an umbrella term for a number of prehistoric statuettes of women portrayed with similar physical attributes from the Upper Palaeolithic, mostly found in Europe, but with finds as far east as Irkutsk Oblast, Siberia, extending their distribution to much of Eurasia, from the...

. Between 1978 and 1984 she worked collaboratively with the English artist Bruce Robbins, work from this collaboration was shown in 10 dual person exhibitions in Europe and America. After living in London for two years, she moved to Amsterdam in 1984, where she has lived ever since.

Subsequent surveys of her work have been organized by Modern Art Oxford
Modern Art Oxford
Modern Art Oxford is an art gallery established in 1965 in Oxford, England. From 1965 to 2002, it was called The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford.-Foundation:...

 (1977), The Paley Levy Gallery at Moore College of Art and Design
Moore College of Art and Design
Moore College of Art & Design educates students for careers in the visual arts. Moore is an independent college of art and design. Located in the heart of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Moore is the first and only women's visual arts college in the nation, and one of only two in the world...

 (1993), Kröller-Müller Museum
Kröller-Müller Museum
The Kröller-Müller Museum is an art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo in the Netherlands.-Museum:...

 (1993), Stedelijk Museum
Stedelijk Museum
Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...

 Amsterdam (1999) and Dia Art Foundation
Dia Art Foundation
Dia Art Foundation is a non-profit organization that initiates, supports, presents, and preserves art projects. It was established in 1974 as the Lone Star Foundation by Philippa de Menil, the daughter of Houston arts patron Dominique de Menil and an heiress to the Schlumberger oil exploration...

 (2002-2003) and in 2009 at the Van Abbemuseum
Van Abbemuseum
Van Abbemuseum is a museum of modern and contemporary art located in central Eindhoven, Netherlands, on the east bank of the Dommel river. Established in 1936, the Abbe Museum is named after its founder, Abbe Henri. Abbe was a lover of modern art and wanted to enjoy it there from Eindhoven...

 in Eindhoven

In the 1950s Baer also posed for nude photographs, and she has claimed in an interview that (by coincidence) she modeled for the semi-nude photo in Richard Hamilton
Richard Hamilton (artist)
Richard William Hamilton, CH was a British painter and collage artist. His 1956 collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, produced for the This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, is considered by critics and historians to be one of the...

's famous 1956 collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....

 Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?
Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?
Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? is a collage by English artist Richard Hamilton. It measures × . The work is now in the collection of the Kunsthalle Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany...

.

She is still working but has said "Being so old now, I’m tempted to stop, if I only wasn’t so sure I’d be bored to tears if I did."

Writing

Baer wrote a number of texts over the years, these are brought together in 'Broadsides & Belles Lettres Selected Writings and Interviews 1965–2010', which provide a general commentary on art as well as her own attitude to her work.

Texts by Jo Baer

"Statements." Systemic Painting. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1966.

"Letters," Artforum, NY, Sept 1967. p. 5-6.

"Edward Kienholz: A Sentimental Journeyman," Art International, Lugano. Apr 1968, p. 45-49.

"Letters." Artforum, New York. Apr 1969, p. 4-5.

"The Artist and Politics: A Symposium." Artforum, Sept 1970. p. 35-36.
"Mach Bands: Art and Vision" and "Xerography & Mach Bands: Instrumental Model", Aspen Magazine. Fall-Winter 1970.

Fluorescent Light Culture," American Orchid Society Bulletin, NY, Sept-Oct 1971.

"Art and Politics" and "On Painting". Flash Art, Nov 1972. p. 6-7 .

"To and Fro and Back and Forth: A Dialogue With Seamus Coleman," Art Monthly, London. Mar 1977, p. 6-10.

"Radical Attitudes to the Gallery: Statement," Art-Net, 1977 London. Reprinted in "Galerie," Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam,'89, p. 39.

"On Painting." Jo Baer Paintings 1962-1975", Museum of Modern Art Oxford 1977 (catalogue).

"Radical Attitudes to the Gallery: Statement #2," Studio International, London, 1980.

"Beyond the Pale," (with Bruce Robbins), REALLIFE Magazine
REALLIFE Magazine
Artist Thomas Lawson and writer Susan Morgan co-founded REALLIFE Magazine in 1979 as a publication “by and about artists.” The magazine’s first issue was made possible by an NEA grant in art criticism, awarded to Lawson through Artists Space...

, NY, Summer 1983, p. 16-17.

"Jo Baer: I am no longer an abstract artist." Art in America, NY. Oct 1983, p. 136-137.

"Jo Baer: Red, White and Blue Gelding Falling to its Right (Double-cross Britannicus/Tri-color Hibernicus); `Tis Ill Pudling in the Cockatrice Den (La-Bas); The Rod Reversed (Mixing Memory and Desire)," Catalogue, 1990 Amsterdam.

"Jo Baer: Four Drawings," (with Bruce Robbins), Catalogue, Amsterdam, 1993.

"Radical Attitudes to the Gallery," Art Gallery Exhibiting, De Balie, Amsterdam,1996 p. 42-43.

"The Diptych," The Pursuit of Painting, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 1997, catalogue, p. 52.

"The Diptych," Catalogue, Jo Baer, Paintings, 1960–1998, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1999, p26-27.
"I am no longer an Abstract Artist," Catalogue, 1999, reprint from '85. pp. 15–19.

Baer is represented in the following public collections

Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...

, Buffalo, N.Y.

Arts Council of Great Britain, London, England Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia

Baltimore Museum of Art
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...

, Baltimore, Md.

Chase Manhattan Bank
Chase Manhattan Bank
JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase, is a national bank that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of financial services firm JPMorgan Chase. The bank was known as Chase Manhattan Bank until it merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. in 2000...

, NYC, N.Y.

DaimlerChrysler AG, Berlin, Germany

Fort Worth Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Gemeentemuseum Arnhem, Arnhem, NL.

Haags Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, NL.

Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, West Germany

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....

, LA Calif

Kunstmusem Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland.

Ludwig Coll., Kölnischer Kunstverein, Köln, West Germany

Ludwig Coll., Suermondt Museum, Aachen, West Germany

Levi-Strauss Coll., San Francisco, Calif

Michener Coll., University of Texas at Austin, Texass

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...

, Ill Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

.

Museum of Contemporary Art, L.A.

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego

Museum of Modern Art, NYC, N.Y Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

.

National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...

, Washington, D.C.

Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase, N.Y.

Norton Simon Museum
Norton Simon Museum
The Norton Simon Museum is an Art Museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known by the names: the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum.-Overview:...

, Pasadena, Calif.

Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, The Hague, NL.

Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, NL.

Seattle Art Museum
Seattle Art Museum
The Seattle Art Museum is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, USA. It maintains three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill, and the Olympic Sculpture Park on the central Seattle waterfront, which opened on...



Saatchi Coll., London, England

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

, S.F. Calif..

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...

, NYC, N.Y.

Stedelijk Museum
Stedelijk Museum
Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...

, Amsterdam, NL.

Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL.

Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

, London, England Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...



Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

, NYC, NY.

University of North Carolina
University of North Carolina
Chartered in 1789, the University of North Carolina was one of the first public universities in the United States and the only one to graduate students in the eighteenth century...

, Greensboro, North Carolina

Yale University Art Gallery
Yale University Art Gallery
The Yale University Art Gallery houses a significant and encyclopedic collection of art in several buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Although it embraces all cultures and periods, the Gallery possesses especially renowned collections of early Italian painting,...

, New Haven, Conn.

External links

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