JoAnne Carson (born 1953) is an American artist who is known for over-the-top, hybrid works in painting, sculpture and assemblage that freely mix fantasy, illusion and narrative, high and low cultural allusions, and seriocomic intent.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. "JoAnne Carson," Fellows. Retrieved September 18, 2019.Smith, Roberta. "JoAnne Carson," The New York Times, p. E 35, November 9, 2001. Retrieved September 18, 2019.Warren, Lynn. "Options 25: JoAnne Carson" (exhibition essay), Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1985. She first gained widespread attention in the 1980s for what ARTnews critic Dan Cameron described as "extraordinary painted constructions—kaleidoscopic assemblages chock full of trompe-l’oeil painting, art-history quips, found objects and nostalgic echoes of early modernism."Cameron, Dan. "A New Generation of Chicago Artists," ARTnews, October 1984, p. 110–116.Frank, Peter. "The human figure: present and /or accounted for," Awards in the Visual Arts 4, Winston-Salem, NC: Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, 1985. Retrieved September 18, 2019.Freudenheim, Susan. "JoAnne Carson at the Fort Worth Art Museum," Art in America, Spring 1983. New York Times critic Roberta Smith wrote that Carson's subsequent work progressed methodically into three dimensions, culminating in freestanding botanical sculpture that exuded "giddy beauty" and "unapologetic decorativeness"; her later imaginary landscapes have been described as whimsical spectacles of "Disneyesque horror."Close, Cynthia. "Artists and Their Gardens," Art New England, July/August 2019, p. 37–9.Jones, Rachel Elizabeth. "JoAnne Carson's 'Hyper Flora,' BigTown Gallery," Seven Days, August 22, 2018. Retrieved September 18, 2019. Carson has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Academy in Rome and National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo artist residencies. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), Albright-Knox Gallery, New Orleans Museum of Art, and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; it belongs to the public art collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, MCA Chicago, Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, among others.Brooklyn Museum. "Bouquet, JoAnne Carson," Collection. Retrieved September 18, 2019.Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. "JoAnne Carson, Chutes and Ladders, 1985," Collection. Retrieved September 18, 2019.Smart Museum of Art. Heaven, JoAnne Carson, Collection. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
Life and career Carson was born in New York City in 1953 and raised in suburban Baltimore.Johnson, Ken. "Albany Art Professor a Hybrid Under Limelight of the Whitney," The Albany Times Union, April 5, 1985, p. C5. Her mother, Edith Sachar, was a sculptor and jeweler and the first wife of painter Mark Rothko; her father, George Carson, was an engineer who worked in Westinghouse’s aeronautics division.Breslin, James. E. B. Mark Rothko: A Biography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Retrieved September 18, 2019.Phillips, Renee. "Interview with Artist JoAnne Carson," Manhattan Arts, 2019. Retrieved September 18, 2019.Unrein, Suzanne. "Conversation with JoAnne Carson," Figure/Ground, June 20, 2019. Retrieved September 18, 2019. After beginning college in Maryland, Carson completed art studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago (BA, 1976) and University of Chicago (MFA, 1979), producing abstract paintings on shaped canvasses, often with narrative themes.
Shortly after graduating, Carson shifted to large three-dimensional paintings featuring constructed and found objects.Bonesteel, Michael. "JoAnne Carson, Museum of Contemporary Art," Artforum, May 1985, p.114–5. She exhibited actively in group shows at N.A.M.E. Gallery and Hallwalls (1978–9) and solo exhibitions at Nancy Lurie Gallery, N.A.M.E., MCA Chicago and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, attracting national reviews, museum acquisitions and grants, including a one-year American Academy in Rome residency.Kneeland, Douglas. "Chicagoans Suggest Variety of Ways to Remember Daley," The New York Times, March 31, 1978, p.21.Bannon, Anthony. "Art Show at Hallwalls," The Buffalo Evening News, February 9, 1979.Porges, Timothy. "JoAnne Carson at N.A.M.E. Gallery," New Art Examiner, December 1982, p. 17.Rowe, Ron. "Expression Found on Many Levels," Fort Worth Star Telegram, December 10, 1982, p. 1C.Kutner, Janet. "Organized Disorder," Dallas Morning News, December 27, 1982, p. 1C. In 1985, she exhibited in the Whitney Biennial and received a Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) Award in the Visual Arts, which included a cash prize and a yearlong traveling exhibition.Cameron, Dan. "A Whitney Wonderland," Arts, Summer 1985, p. 66–9. That year she also accepted an assistant professorship at University at Albany, SUNY and moved to New York City, shuttling between a lower Manhattan loft and the university.University at Albany. "Demonstrating Exceptional Creative Ability in the Arts," News, April 13, 2016. Retrieved September 18, 2019.Johnson, Ken. "Profile: JoAnne Carson," Metroland (Albany), December 17, 1987, p. 18.
In the next decade, Carson exhibited at the Ruth Siegel (New York), Dart (Chicago), Eva Mannes (Atlanta) and Sylvia Schmidt (New Orleans) galleries; in the 2000s, she has had solo exhibitions at the University of Maine Art Museum, and the Black and White, Claire Oliver, Joan Washburn and Plus Ultra galleries in New York, and appeared in group shows at the Fleming Museum of Art, National Academy Museum and Sheldon Art Museum, among others.Green, Roger. "Another Gem Shines on Julia Street," Times Picayune, Lagniappe Section, p. 25, Dec. 7, 1990.Rosenberg, Karen. "Where Have All the Paintings Gone? To the National Academy," The New York Times, May 30, 2008, p. E32. Retrieved September 18, 2019.University at Albany. "JoAnne Carson," Fine Arts, Retrieved September 18, 2019. Carson continues to teach at University at Albany, having been promoted to Professor in 2006 and served two terms as Department Chair. She splits time between Brooklyn and rural Vermont with her husband, artist and professor Jim Butler.Kadour, Ric Kasini. "Hyperflora: The Synthetic Landscapes of JoAnne Carson," Vermont Art Guide, 2019, p. 36–43. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
Work Carson's work has moved freely between painting, sculpture, and eventually, landscape art. Critics compared the dualistic space of her constructed paintings from the 1980s to "pop-up" reinventions of Cubist painting.Marvel, Bill. "Pop-Up Art," Dallas Times Herald, December 29, 1982, p 1E. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, she focused increasingly on sculptural, nature-focused work; in the 2010s, she began to translate that sculptural world back into pictorial space in fantastical paintings and drawings.
Constructed paintings (1980–1993) Carson's first constructed paintings were large, complex works that featured canny modernist art references, interpenetrating fragmented images, and built forms and found objects (e.g., gutted televisions, wooden chairs, guitars, window shutters) that she camouflaged with illusionistic painting and Cubist-like multiplying perspectives.Tyler, Paula Eyrich. "Bold, Witty Confusions," Artweek, January 8, 1983.Pendergaft, Norman E. "Awards in the Visual Arts 4," Art Papers, November/December 1985, p. 45–6. Critics such as Ken Johnson described them as whirlpool- or "tornado-like" works that exploded the shallow space of traditional painting, capriciously gathering widespread elements into a referential vortex noted for its attention to composition and finish.Elliott, David. "A Radioactive Mystery of Oversexed Vamps," Chicago Sun Times, Show Section, June 7, 1981, p. 23.Krejnik, Catherine. "JoAnne Carson at Nancy Lurie Gallery," New Art Examiner, Summer 1981, p.16. Art in America'''s Susan Freudenheim suggested that works such as The Broken Pitcher (1982) or Palettable (1981)JoAnne Carson website. "Early Work." Retrieved September 18, 2019. enacted both a "purgative" Oedipal struggle against modernist masters and a reinterpretation of them, likening the former work to "an encounter between a hurricane and Cezanne's Still Life, ca. 1900."
After Carson's Rome residency (1983–4), writers such as Peter Frank noted a new synthesis of Renaissance influences, indicated by richer palettes and painterly detail as well as her greater interest in the human figure, legends and myth.Artner, Alan. "Artists Show Off 'Options' at Exhibit," Chicago Tribune, Sec. 5, p. 9A, February 21, 1985.Yood, James. "Options: JoAnne Carson, Jin Soo Kim, Paul Rosin, Ken Warneke," New Art Examiner, May 1985, p. 67. These paintings were structurally flatter, but more texturally dense, their surfaces crammed with puns, symbols, illusions, ornate patterning and spatial ambiguity; in some, fragmented elements and objects referenced Cubist works by Juan Gris and Braque (e.g., View of the Alley 1983), while more narratively elaborate works recalled the vignettes of Hieronymus Bosch and Giorgio de Chirico (e.g., Chute and Ladders, 1985).Heller, Faith. "SECCA Show Afford Symbolism, Form and Color," Winston-Salem Journal, August 4, 1985.Triplette, Laurie. "A Proud Homecoming," The Spectator (Winston-Salem), August 13, 1985.Kessler, Jane. "Awards in Visual Arts 4," The Arts Journal, September 1985, p. 4.Jarmusch, Ann. "Awards in the Visual Arts," ARTnews, March 1986, p. 127–8. Dan Cameron described them as aimed "squarely into the postmodern present," their narrative imagery "torn between a romanticized past and a present suffering from media burnout." MCA Chicago curator Lynne Warren called them "rhapsodies on visual richness only possible in the 20th century."
By the end of the 1980s, Carson returned to more sculptural work that reviews noted for its heightened urgency, increasingly surrealist sensibility, and disturbing references to the body, fractured identity, loss and desire.Wright, Peg Churchill. "Rice Gallery exhibitors redefine art," The Daily Gazette, December 27, 1990.Lail, Thomas. "Artists Prove Painting Can Survive the 2000s," The Albany Times Union, Preview, p. 10, 1991. Carnival of Values (1990) typified this work; it was a large oval canvas featuring a Magritte-like, bowler-capped man layered over an affixed television chassis with protruding arms and legs and a great eye in the center, surrounded by clock-like, three-dimensional numerals and an inverted hat filled with sloshing blood. This work culminated with the larger-than-life, transitional figure-plant relief, Tree of Desire (1993), whose form and fecund symbolism signaled Carson's coming embrace of the nature-related imagery.
Sculpture (1999– )