
Forrest Bess
Seeing Things Invisible
Clare Elliott(Author)
Yale University Press
Published on 25. June 2013
Book
Hardback
112 pages
978-0-300-18973-5 (ISBN)
Description
The eccentric visionary artist Forrest Bess (1911-1977) spent most of his life on the Texas coast working as a commercial fisherman. In his spare time, however, he painted prolifically, creating an extraordinary body of work rich with enigmatic symbolism. Bess experienced hallucinations that both frightened and intrigued him, and he incorporated images from these visions into small-scale abstract paintings starting in the mid-1940s.
His canvases attracted an underground following, and between 1949 and 1967, Betty Parsons organized six solo exhibitions of Bess's work at her prominent New York City gallery. Since then, the art world has periodically rediscovered his work, most recently through a 2012 Whitney Biennial installation by American sculptor Robert Gober, which further exposed Bess's psychological, medical, and religious theories. Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible is the artist's first museum retrospective with catalogue in the United States and offers a fresh look at Bess's work and a better understanding of this curious and complicated artist.
Distributed for The Menil Collection
Exhibition Schedule:
The Menil Collection(04/19/13-08/18/13)
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
(09/29/13-01/05/14)
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY
(02/16/14-05/11/14)
His canvases attracted an underground following, and between 1949 and 1967, Betty Parsons organized six solo exhibitions of Bess's work at her prominent New York City gallery. Since then, the art world has periodically rediscovered his work, most recently through a 2012 Whitney Biennial installation by American sculptor Robert Gober, which further exposed Bess's psychological, medical, and religious theories. Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible is the artist's first museum retrospective with catalogue in the United States and offers a fresh look at Bess's work and a better understanding of this curious and complicated artist.
Distributed for The Menil Collection
Exhibition Schedule:
The Menil Collection(04/19/13-08/18/13)
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
(09/29/13-01/05/14)
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY
(02/16/14-05/11/14)
Reviews / Votes
"Consolidating forty-eight of Bess's paintings...this exhibition and catalog are the next steps in spawning light from Bess's refreshingly sacral body of work."-Artforum * Artforum *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
60 color illus.
Dimensions
Height: 267 mm
Width: 241 mm
Weight
907 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-300-18973-5 (9780300189735)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Clare Elliott is assistant curator at The Menil Collection. Robert Gober is an artist working in New York City.