Original Robert Cottingham 'star' Pre Production Sample Lithograph - Fox Edition

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Original robert cottingham (b 1935) 'star' lithograph pre production sample printed by fox graphic editions
this is just a great … Read more Original robert cottingham (b 1935) 'star' lithograph pre production sample printed by fox graphic editions
this is just a great original piece. This is one of those pieces that I bought because I was able to know the provenance on it and was actually pretty excited about it. I purchased this print (and some others) from the granddaughter of herbert a fox, the owner of fox graphics editions. When fox shut down his printing shop, there were prints that went to the family. This print comes from that collection. This is an original lithograph by robert cottingham done in 1985 as they were developing the final print to run in the edition of 100. You can find the signed and numbered edition for sale for thousands of dollars out there and examples in museums like the smithsonian. This is a wonderful example of one of the artist's most famous images. Image measures 15 1/2 x 15 1/2 on complete original sheet measuring 23 7/8 x 22 1/2 inches. The image itself is in nearly perfect condition. As you can see along the left edge of the image, the printing stone didnt print as dark as it was supposed to. The rest of the image looks to be perfect. A few small minor rubs within the image but nothing bad. Obviously it is not signed or numbered. There is the original fox blindstamp lower left in the margin. The margins show some issues and stains but nothing that wouldnt be covered with an archival matte and frame. Along the top margin you can still see the spots where the paper was held in place for the printing. Really this is a wonderful cool example of the artist's print as he is developing the final product. Matted and framed it would be a stunning addition to any collection. Print is stored in a tube and will be shipped that way.

For those not familiar with the artist his biography from the Guggenheim reads: "Born in 1935 in Brooklyn, Robert Cottingham is known for his paintings and prints of urban American landscapes, particularly building facades, neon signs, movie marquees, and shop fronts. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1955 through 1958, he earned a BFA at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, in 1963. Cottingham began his professional artistic career as an art director for the advertising firm Young and Rubicam in the early 1960s. Although he is typically associated with Photorealism, Cottingham never considered himself a Photorealist, but rather a realist painter working in a long tradition of American vernacular scenes. In this respect, his work often draws parallels to a number of American painters such as Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Edward Hopper, and Charles Sheeler.

Cottingham’s interest in the intersections of art and commerce derive from his career as an adman and the influence of Pop art. Many of his paintings convey an interest in typography and lettering, as well as an awareness of the psychological impact of certain isolated words and letters. In his facades, techniques from advertising, namely cropping and enlarging, often produce words of enigmatic or comical resonance such as “Art,” “Ha,” or “Oh.” Cottingham’s enlarged sense of scale is reminiscent of James Rosenquist’s work, while his interest in text suggests the influence of Robert Indiana and Jasper Johns. In general, Cottingham viewed his work as continuing the legacy of Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, who also had a background in advertising.

In 1964, Cottingham relocated to Los Angeles for work. There, inspired by the drastically different environment of the West Coast metropolis, he began to commit seriously to painting. Fascinated by Hollywood’s exaggerated glitz and the downtrodden atmosphere of the downtown, Cottingham saw in Los Angeles the relics of a bygone commercial heyday and desired to capture its kitschy and uncanny atmosphere, bathed in the near perpetual sunlight of Southern California.

In 1968, Cottingham ended his advertising career in order to devote all his time to painting. In the late 1960s, he started using photography in his practice, first as an initial reference point for his process. After selecting a photograph, he translates it into black-and-white drawings by projecting the image onto gridded paper, as a means of perfecting the tonal range between light and shadow. He often creates subsequent studies on paper using color. He finalizes the process by projecting either the original slide or any of the drawings onto a canvas and organizing the composition according to a grid. Another reason for Cottingham’s rejection of the Photorealist label is that he does not view his works as mere painterly translations of photographs or reproductions of reality. He has been known to change the words in his facades to alter the meaning of the subject. His primary interest lies in the subject matter—the urban American vernacular—rather than the deployment of a photo-based technique. After spending a period of time in London from 1972 to 1976, Cottingham found the city’s signs and history too foreign and removed from his own interests, and returned to the United States to settle in rural Connecticut. During the late 1970s and 1980s, his urban cityscapes became more expansive, with more complex and broader views of storefronts, vistas, and entire neighborhoods. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cottingham expanded his iconography of American vernacular culture to include trains and railroad imagery. More recently, he has focused on images of vintage typewriters, a subject that first interested him in the late 1990s.

Cottingham taught at the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles (1969–70), and the National Academy of Design, New York (1991). He was the artist in residence at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut (1987–92). His work has been included in significant group exhibitions, including Documenta, Kassel, West Germany (1972), and those at the Serpentine Gallery, London (1973); Centre national d’art contemporain, Paris (1974); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1978); a traveling exhibition at the National Museum of American Art (now Smithsonian American Art Museum), Washington, D.C. (1986); Samsung Museum of Modern Art, Seoul (2001); and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2009). Cottingham’s printed oeuvre was celebrated by a solo presentation at National Museum of American Art in 1998–99. The artist lives and works in western Connecticut.” See less