The demise of painting has been asserted at times throughout its history, especially in the mid-to-late 1960s, the heyday of Minimal and Conceptual art. But it wasn’t long before that view came to seem shortsighted and parochial, especially with the resurgence of painting in the late 1970s.
Even in the ’60s, painting persisted in various forms, from the Minimalist paintings of Frank Stella to the enormous self-portraits of Chuck Close to works by artists who were determined not to give up on the medium but to expand its material possibilities by the elimination of the painting’s support.
Nina Yankowitz was one of those artists — Sam Gilliam and Alan Shields were others — and the first gallery of “In the Out/Out the In,” her current retrospective at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, shows her variations on unstretched canvases. As you enter the gallery, the first work on your left, “Oh Say Can You See” (1967-68), encapsulates many of the elements that would define her method going forward.
Made while she was still a student at the School of Visual Arts, Ms. Yankowitz used a compressor to spray-paint the opening notes of “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the draped banner, er, canvas. During the summer before her final year at S.V.A., she was invited to participate in Group 212, a residency program in Woodstock, N.Y., that included experimental musicians.
“I met this guy, Ken Werner, also known as Phil Harmonic, and asked if he would take the opening notes and have it run as a loop with the painting,” Ms. Yankowitz said during a tour of the exhibition. The melody was manipulated on a Moog synthesizer.
“It was the ’60s and it was a very conceptual time,” Ms. Yankowitz said. She admired the work of such Conceptual artists as Joseph Kosuth and Lawrence Weiner, “but I felt it was locked into this male perspective. I was interested in stretching the boundaries of what painting could be.”
But while the slouching materiality of the canvas did indeed stretch the boundaries of what painting could be, the choice of the image of the notes and the recording of their distorted sound lent the piece a strong conceptual component. It also foretold her embrace of technical elements such as sound, video, and film.
Not to mention, at the same time, as Glenn Adamson, a curator and writer, wrote in the exhibition’s catalog, “It was an insouciant metaphor for America’s unstable, shifting identity.” Thus it had an implied political component, as has so much of her work over the succeeding decades.
Across the corridor from the oldest works in the show is the newest, “Closing Bell,” a dramatic mixed-media installation from this year in which a large wooden boat seems to be breaking through the wall into the gallery. (Piercing walls is another through line in her work, represented by her cantilevered pieces from the late ’90s that emerge from high up on several of the gallery walls.)
For “Closing Bell,” “I asked artists to think about what they would grab to take with them if they were forced to leave their home, their country, whether from global warming concerns, devastation, or because it is an oppressive society,” Ms. Yankowitz said.
Among the 30 artists she contacted were Nanette Carter, Terri Hyland, Barbara Kopple, Donald Lipski, Melissa Meyer, Christian Scheider, Christine Sciulli, and Arlene Slavin, as well as Susan Yankowitz, her sister, and Ian Holden, her son. Of the objects or images submitted, only four exist in their original form. Ms. Yankowitz transformed the rest.
“Taking their images, and with their approval, I printed them on the tarps, flags, quilts, scrolls, blankets, and rugs” that are piled within and alongside the boat. Among the submissions were a musical score from Mr. Scheider, a teddy bear from Ms. Slavin, a rug from Joyce Kozloff, and, from Wendi Gu, Ms. Yankowitz’s daughter-in-law, a message in a bottle.
While many of the objects are only partly visible, walking around the boat encourages imagining what narratives might be implied by the lobster flag, the T-shirt, a photograph of a dentist, a sculpture made of roller blades and drumsticks, a hat in a water bottle, or abandoned rubber flip-flops.
Asked to characterize the through lines of her career, Ms. Yankowitz said, “Storytelling, and collaborating with the public, for them to infuse their perspective.” Both apply to “Closing Bell,” which is installed in a darkened room with dramatic light moving across the pebbled “beach” on which the boat is aground.
The museum’s large central gallery showcases the variety of images and materials and subjects Ms. Yankowitz addresses. “Hell’s Breath” (1982) is a frieze consisting of hundreds of ceramic tiles mounted on seven four-foot-square panels. First shown at MoMA PS1, the tiles range from solid colors to abstract patterns to 3-D devil’s heads and 3-D faces based on Noh theater masks, the latter inspired by a grant that took her to Japan.
Asked where she learned ceramics, she said, “I made it up.” When one ceramicist told her she couldn’t make 3-D tiles because they would crack, she thought of porcelain toilets she saw outside in Japan during the winter. “They never cracked. I went to a scientist, he analyzed the formula Kohler uses for its toilets, and I was able to cast the tiles without breakage.”
In the center of the gallery is “Dog on Beam” and “Dog and Pony Show,” both from 1993. All of the animals are made from copper wire, aluminum wool, and aluminum frames. The main dog and a ball are balanced on a beam above the other animals. A relatively rare instance of figuration, it reflects her embrace of a wide range of materials.
Also in the main gallery are two pieces of furniture from her “Slant Series” (1986), which was commissioned by the collectors Sydney and Frances Lewis. Both the headboard and the bedside table are faced with ceramic tile. While the headboard is vertical, the table is on a slant, resulting in a trapezoidal profile from which its drawers emerge.
The range of work in the exhibition is such that a review can only scratch the surface. But the political and feminist component of Ms. Yankowitz’s work deserves comment, especially “Unsung (S)hero: Emmy Noether Tempts Fate From Then to Now,” a two-channel digital video whose vertical monitors are framed to resemble windows. The subject of this piece, Emmy Noether (1882-1935), was a leading but often overlooked mathematician who made important contributions to abstract algebra and physics.
Other women overlooked by history and highlighted by Ms. Yankowitz range from Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray images led to the discovery of the double helix, to the actress Hedy Lamarr, who worked with George Antheil, a Hollywood composer, to invent a frequency-hopping technique that today is considered an important development in the field of wireless communications. But the Navy rejected it, suggesting that, as a celebrity, her time would be better spent selling war bonds.
“In the Out/Out the In” is on view through Feb. 22.
