Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection

by Kristen Hileman, James Meyer, Anne Truitt (Artist)

Anne Truitt (1921-2004) is a heroine of American Minimalism, an increasingly admired artist whose journals ( Daybook , Prospect , Turn ) have a longstanding and devoted readership, but whose art has not previously been the subject of a substantial monograph. Perception and Reflection remedies this historical oversight superbly and decisively. The evolution of Truitt's sensibility is at once a classic Minimalist story and the tale of a truly independent following an encounter with the black paintings of Ad Reinhardt at the Guggenheim in 1961, she abandoned her earlier sculptural style and began to make stark, columnar works inscribed with bands of sometimes bright and sometimes quiet color. Truitt's account of this transition betrays her rare clarity and "I thought to myself, 'If I make a sculpture, it will just stand up straight and the seasons will go around it and the light will go around it and it will record time.'"

Genres: Art

176 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2009

Reviews

[Cameron Toney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never seen an Anne Truitt sculpture before, but this book has certainly made me want to see one.
They seem so simple, and yet, when I was turning the pages of this book, some of them just knocked me clean over.
What an interesting use of sculpture.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent exhibition catalogue with lots of colour images published for the Truitt show at the Hirshhorn Museum. There are two very interesting, scholarly essays based on extensive research. One by the curator Kristen Hilemen and the other by James Meyer.

Meyer continues his consideration of Truitt started in his superb book on minimalism: Minimalism: Art and polemics in the sixties. When I read that book I was at first skeptical of the way he positioned Truitt in relation to minimalism, it seemed like a strange, sort of 'feminist recovery" inclusion. Now I am think that positioning Truitt in relation to minimalism really opens up that history, letting colour and sensuality back in. Her work needs to be seen in the flesh, but it is nonetheless very well represented by the catalogue, quite a feat in itself!

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have definitely been curious about Anne Truitt's body of work, and though I missed the exhibition this catalog definitely does the job well of showing her sculptural and 2D work. It also points out the influences and origin of ideas, the overlapping between the pre-Minimalism/Color Field days to a Minimalist-lite (?) designation thrust upon her. In the end the sculptures only got better over time and the paintings were certainly ahead of their time.