Robert Cottingham
Robert Cottingham
Lab Grant Resident
“…Cottingham’s Components could never be mistaken for a work from the 1920s. Their colossal scale, artificial light, and synthetic colors belong to a post modern world. Made of paper these monumental symbols of heavy industry show their fragility in the visible natural fibers that composed them. It is ironic for his first experiment with such an organic medium as pulp painting, Cottingham has chosen a subject as far removed from nature as possible. It is, however, in keeping with his tendency to avoid all natural elements in his art. (Rarely do his outdoor paintings include even an inch of blue sky.) The adventure of working with a new material is what attracted him to paper pulp. Each new technique Cottingham has explored, notably in his printmaking experiments, has opened him to new concepts and strategies, which he then applies to other works. At Dieu Donné, while investigating the possibilities that both a new subject and a new medium offered to his imagination, Cottingham has uncovered all the drama that can lurk behind little pieces of machinery. ”
—Excerpt from “Dazzling Disregard” by Isabelle Dervaux, for “Robert Cottingham: Components,” Lab Grant Publication Series No. 9, Dieu Donné
About the Artist
Robert Cottingham (b. 1935, Brooklyn, NY) is known for his paintings and prints of urban American landscapes, particularly building facades, neon signs, movie marquees, and shop fronts. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1955 through 1958, he earned a BFA at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, in 1963. Cottingham began his professional artistic career as an art director for the advertising firm Young and Rubicam in the early 1960s. Although he is typically associated with Photorealism, Cottingham never considered himself a Photorealist, but rather a realist painter working in a long tradition of American vernacular scenes. In this respect, his work often draws parallels to a number of American painters such as Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Edward Hopper, and Charles Sheeler.
Cottingham taught at the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles (1969–70), and the National Academy of Design, New York (1991). He was the artist in residence at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut (1987–92). His work has been included in significant group exhibitions, including Documenta, Kassel, West Germany (1972), and those at the Serpentine Gallery, London (1973); Centre national d’art contemporain, Paris (1974); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1978); a traveling exhibition at the National Museum of American Art (now Smithsonian American Art Museum), Washington, D.C. (1986); Samsung Museum of Modern Art, Seoul (2001); and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2009). Cottingham’s printed oeuvre was celebrated by a solo presentation at National Museum of American Art in 1998–99. The artist lives and works in western Connecticut, and shows with Forum Gallery. (Source: Guggenheim)
