Joan Banach (born 1948) is an American artist, writer, and curator, and formerly assistant to AbEx painter and printmaker Robert Motherwell. She won a Guggenheim fellowship in 2000.[1] Her works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York[2] and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam[3].

She paints using reconstituted oil paint on wood panels, a medium used by Hollywood matte painters to avoid reflections, which gives her paintings a flat light-absorbing quality. Critic Thomas Micchelli notes that her work has many similarities with modernists such as Ad Reinhardt but also has more contemporary pop art qualities: her work "plays a game of quiet seduction by hitting High Art marks while delivering the graphic intrigue of a Mike Mignola dark-on-dark cover for Hellboy or BPRD".[4] Dominique Nahas praised her work for its "Blakean intensity and opulent complexity".[5]

Born in Brooklyn in 1948[6], Banach studied under Lee Bontecou at Brooklyn College in the 1970s.[7] She has also written on Bontecou's drawings in the exhibition catalog Drawn Worlds.[8][9]

She formerly worked for artist Robert Motherwell as a personal curator and cataloguer from 1981: she co-wrote a catalogue raisonné of his prints, co-edited The Writings of Robert Motherwell with Dore Ashton, and arranged gallery shows of his work. After his death in 1991, she became secretary of his Dedalus Foundation.[10] She was dismissed in 2008, following accusations that she had taken some of Motherwell's works without proper paperwork, and a dispute within the organisation over claims that the foundation's CEO Jack Flam had wrongly identifying works as being by Motherwell.[11][12]

She has had solo shows including Citizen at Small A Projects, New York City in 2008.[4]

References

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  1. ^ "Joan Banach". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
  2. ^ "Joan Banach". MoMA. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
  3. ^ "The Convent of l'Adoration Perpétuelle". Stedelijk Museum. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
  4. ^ a b Micchelli, Thomas (February 4, 2009). "Joan Banach: Citizen". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
  5. ^ "Joan Banach". Plexus. 1997. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
  6. ^ "Biography". JoanBanach.com. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
  7. ^ Ebony, David (February 26, 2014). "Lee Bontecou's Inventions by David Ebony: An Interview with Joan Banach". Yale University Press. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
  8. ^ "Lee Bontecou: Drawn Worlds". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
  9. ^ Lescaze, Zoe (June 11, 2014). "TEN CREATIVE, DISORIENTING, ENLIGHTENING, AND SOMETIMES FRIGHTENING MONOGRAPHS AND CATALOGUES". ArtNews. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  10. ^ Pogrebin, Robin (March 27, 2009). "A Tug of War Over Robert Motherwell". New York Times. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
  11. ^ Kazakina, Katya (September 9, 2013). "A $40,000-an-Hour Fee, Lawsuits Rock Artist Foundations". Bloomberg Business. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
  12. ^ "Dueling Lawsuits Present Motherwell Foundation He Said, She Said". Blouin Art Info. March 30, 2009. Retrieved 27 July 2015.