May 10, 2018

An expert on the early work of Frank Stella and American abstract painting in the 1950s and 1960s, art historian Alex Bacon will contextualize Walter Darby Bannard’s early work in relation to the then-current tendencies in abstraction.

Bacon will also discuss Bannard’s time in Princeton, New Jersey, where he worked alongside Stella—who was on the verge of his own breakthrough with his series “Black Paintings” (1958–60)—and Michael Fried, who would soon become one of the leading art critics of his generation and later on one of its most significant art historians.

Alex Bacon is an art historian based in New York City who regularly writes criticism and organizes exhibitions of both contemporary and historical art. Bacon is currently a Curatorial Associate at the Princeton University Art Museum.

Part of ICA Idea 008: The Studio

Although many contemporary artists have broadened the term “studio” to encompass any space where they work and even where they present this work to an audience, The Studio program wants to propose a view from the other side: How have socioeconomic changes, the mutation of labor, and the increasing role of media in everyday life of society transformed the possibilities of the studio? In post-Fordist times, as our cognitive and affective capacities are constantly put to work, what becomes of the studio?