NARRATOR:

American artist Richard Tuttle was considered a rebel, even within the rebellious 1960s art scene in New York, where he rose to fame. Unconstrained by convention, Tuttle‘s work employs a wide variety of humble materials—from paint to wire to plywood—to present poetic responses to everyday life. Former SFMOMA curator Madeleine Grynsztejn:

MADELEINE GRYNSZTEJN:

As you’re standing in front of this piece, what I would wish for you to notice is a number of things. First of all, I would wish for you to pay attention to the height of this piece off the ground. It’s actually—hangs rather low. And in doing so, it actually becomes more approachable to the visitor.

Richard began very, very early on in his career with the relief as a kind of chosen construction. The object sits on the wall, but projects slightly out from the wall, so that it becomes more a part of our world.

It is made up of ten square plywood panels on top of which have been added elements that Tuttle has drawn from the everyday world. The things that we find littered around our desk drawers, that we would normally not pay attention to, are those things, those little orphans that Richard rescues and incorporates into his work: a boat-like shape, a piece of PVC, images of mountains or hills, images that are metaphorical and evocative, and that would invite the visitor to dream with Tuttle about what this work might mean.