December 22, 2025
December 5, 2025
Building Models: The Shape of Painting
Last night, I attended a panel discussion centered on the exhibition at The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation in the Lower East Side, entitled "Building Models: The Shape of Painting", Curated by Saul Ostrow.
Saul is an old friend of mine, as are more than a few artists exhibited in the exhibition. A brilliant feat of curation, I believe Saul had cast an intelligent net over what could be an unwieldy topic, how the physical nature of the support had been incorporated into painting, proper. I consider his essay to be magisterial and I will paste it under the fold.
I took notes:
(On Tradition by Theodor W. Adorno)
Building Models: The Shape of Painting
"The Shape of Painting" (2025) is the most recent installment in Building Models , an ongoing series of exhibitions I began curating in 1985. [See the complete list below.] From the outset, these exhibitions have been influenced by structural anthropology, which, at the time, formed part of the conceptual shift underlying the critique of Modernism. My intention was to use these exhibitions to index the diverse formalisms of abstract painting as they evolved between 1951 (the birth of AbEx) and 1974--the year Artforum announced painting's 'death.' This declaration of the end painting was not merely a provocative pronouncement, but an episode within a broader cultural transformation shaped by the disruption, dissipation, and critique of established norms. This process typified the counter-culture of the 1950-60s, which culminated in the philosophical end of Modernism, which was throughout the 1980s formally announced.
These cultural shifts were the result of converging technological, ideological, sociological, and historical forces that heralded the advent of the post-industrial age. In this new era, information, data, and mass communication became capital's newest commodities. This transformation dissolved boundaries between art, commerce, and everyday life, profoundly altering the Western mindset and its cultural expression. In response to these developments--and to the emergent Post-Modernism that accompanied them--I found it necessary to develop a critical model of abstract art that would bypass the Modernist framework perpetuated by institutions. This framework insisted on tracking abstract painting through a linear trajectory of stylistic and conceptual "progress," a notion Post-Modernism itself sought to dismantle. Ironically, this view has persisted to this day, sustained precisely so that contemporary theorist might have something to critique.
My objective in presenting diverse models of abstract art practice has been to investigate the intertwined discourses--of perception, cognition, and semiotics--that define the field of abstract painting. For instance, The Shape of Painting offers a sampling of works that address effects which have been sublimated, rendered unrealizable, or constrained by a formalism that takes the rectangle as painting's norm--a norm that has persisted chiefly because the rectangular format was dominant in ancient Greek and Roman architectural decorations, such as frescoes and mosaics. This preference profoundly influenced later Western art, as rectangular paintings aligned seamlessly with the rectilinear architectural environments of buildings.
In the Middle-Ages, much early Western painting was produced for ecclesiastical and devotional purposes, where rectangular panels were assembled into polyptychs--multi-panel works that functioned as architectural elements in churches and chapels, notably as altarpieces and choir screens. Individual panels also served as a means of personal devotion. As the economy and patronage changed painting grew more portable, rectangular supports--first wood panels, then canvas stretched over wooden frames--proved far simpler to construct than circular or irregular shapes. Wood panels could be cut into straight-edged forms using basic tools, while canvases could be evenly tensioned across rectangular stretchers. Moreover, these uniform shapes allowed for efficient storage--stacked against walls or fitted into architectural niches without wasted space. Furthermore, as art production became increasingly commercialized during the Renaissance, the rectangular format facilitated standardization of sizes, streamlining processes for artists, patrons, and framers alike.
In keeping with the Renaissance's break with feudalism and its adoption of humanist ideals, the rectangular format provided a "neutral" framework for naturalistic representation and perspectival compositions. Artists used the edges and proportions of the rectangle to guide the placement of elements, creating visually satisfying arrangements that conveyed a sense of order and stability. The straight edges of the rectangle aligned naturally with the vanishing points and horizon lines of linear perspective, enhancing the illusion of depth and three-dimensionality--effectively offering a window or doorway onto another world. The rectangle's practicality--its ease of construction, portability, and standardization--further cemented its dominance during the Renaissance. By the end of the Baroque period, it had become the default shape for Western painting, simply because aesthetically it was the most adaptable format
With the introduction of modernism's negative critique at the beginning of the 20th century, the neutrality of painting's means, and its rectangular format provoked critical reassessment. By the mid-1960s, the practice of shaping painting's support reflected not only painters' ambition to transcend conventional presentation but also a heightened engagement with phenomenological ideas that had influenced the understanding of the roles perception, cognition, and materiality play in the construction of reality. This formulation fundamentally rejected the Renaissance-era conception of paintings as illusionistic windows onto another reality or mirrors of our own. Instead, artists asserted art's existence as a tangible object occupying real space--a reorientation that integrated form and content to emphasize physical actuality over whatever representational artifice it portrayed.
Among the earliest modern artists engaged in shaping painting was, Peter Laszlo Peri (1899-1967) who influenced by Constructivism made "cut-out" paintings (1921-1924) in which he would cut his canvases into irregular, shapes, transforming the supporting edges into active compositional elements. These works--displayed in Berlin and later New York--redefined the painting's relationship to its environment, positioning it as an interactive entity rather than a passive surface. Peri's Constructivist ethos framing the artwork as a spatial intervention that engaged viewers' bodily awareness anticipated post-war developments.
Meanwhile in the States, Abraham Joel Tobias (1899-1956) exhibited his "sculptural paintings" at New York's Delphic Studios in 1935. By integrating the frame into the artwork's structure, Tobias emphasized materiality and spatial presence--an approach that would later inform his public murals, which fused art with architectural contexts. About the same time, the geometric abstract painter Charles Green Shaw experimented with making shaped canvases, his Plastic Polygon series, were painted on custom-cut panels. whose perimeters echoed the stepped forms of his geometry.
Building upon such innovations, the Madí movement was founded in Buenos Aires in 1946. The Madí movement made non-figurative, geometric art its core principle, while emphasizing the autonomy of the artwork as a physical object in real space. Madí artists rejected traditional rectangular formats and embraced irregularly shaped canvases and objects. Their radical approach was further crystallized in the work of Rhod Rothfuss (1920-1969), a Uruguayan-Argentine artist and Madí co-founder, who began creating his marco irregular (irregular frame) paintings in 1942 .In his 1944 manifesto El marco: un problema de la plástica actual critiqued he condemned the rectangle as a relic of Albertian perspective, arguing that frames should emerge organically from a work's internal geometry rather than impose external boundaries. His jagged-edged canvases, dissolved distinctions between artwork and wall, creating perceptual tension through asymmetrical forms and reflective surfaces. Rothfuss asserted that "a painting should begin and end with itself," thereby rejecting art's role as a fragmentary illusion and instead asserting its autonomy as a spatial entity.
This progression--from Peri's material disruptions to Rothfuss's theoretical rigor, and ultimately to the Madí movement--demonstrates how mid-century artists reconceived painting's ontology. By destabilizing the frame and engaging phenomenology, they transformed the canvas from a medium of illusion into a site of embodied encounter, irrevocably altering modern art's trajectory. The period following World War II saw a widespread reconsideration of painting's form, function, and relationship to space, both in Europe and the United States. Subsequently, in Paris after World War II, the German artist Rupprecht Geiger began exhibiting shaped canvases in 1948, further expanding the possibilities of this format. By the 1950s in the States the little-known Carl Pickhardt pioneered the use of the shaped canvas, calling for a new pictorial structure without horizontal or vertical references, while Carmen Herrera created paintings that were physical structures, pushing the boundaries of painting's objecthood, and Ed Clark made oval canvases designed to match the human field of vision. In 1963-1964, in Italy, Lucio Fontana began his Concetto Spaziale, La fine di Dio series (Spatial Concept, The End of God), making pierced, egg-shaped paintings that represented a significant departure from painting's traditional approach to symbolism.
Meanwhile, West Coast by the mid-1960s, artists such as Robert Irwin, Tony DeLap, and Ronald Davis experimenting with painting's format, produced wall-mounted objects that prioritized perceptual ambiguity, material experimentation, and the blurring of boundaries between painting and sculpture. Although their works do not fit the traditional definition of shaped paintings, these experiments paralleled broader developments in abstraction, where the focus on materiality, process, and the physical experience of art as an event became central to both painting and the expanded field.
Though shaped painting is most popularly associated with Minimalist artists like Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Robert Mangold, and David Novros, their approach to abstract art--while not process-driven--nonetheless focuses on procedures that embody key principles central to Post-Minimalism, most significantly materiality and the physical experience of time and space, resulting in art that is to be understood as an event. This approach is typified by Dorothea Rockburne's folded canvases and shaped paintings, and by Paul Mogensen's multi-part, progressive arrangements of canvases. Such works task viewers with perceiving the painting as being present within their own space, rather than as a static object on the wall. Meanwhile, Richard Jackson--known for his installation paintings and performances--radically expands the boundaries of painting by taking the emphasis on materiality and process to its extreme. In contrast, Richard Tuttle's wall-based, unstretched, eccentrically shaped dyed canvases and glued paper polygons further dematerialize the traditional painting object by challenging its very definition.
In France, the deconstruction of abstract painting is closely associated with the Supports/Surfaces movement, active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Artists such as Claude Viallat, Daniel Dezeuze, and Noël Dolla--influenced by post-structuralist and Marxist theory--examined painting's basic components, canvas and stretcher, foregrounding the work's physical and material presence. Although shaped canvases per se were not a feature of Supports/Surfaces, their deconstruction of painting resulted in a variety of formats, sharing a common goal with artists who address painting's shape: to engage viewers in a more dynamic, physical and conceptual experience. Both approaches invite viewers to consider the artwork as part of their environment rather than as a static object hung on a wall. By emphasizing its form, they inhibit the conventional suspension of disbelief that allows viewers to overlook the artwork's true nature. This emphasis appears to be a response to the broader cultural shift toward inattentiveness to materiality, process, and the physical experience of time and space--in other words, these artists sought to counteract the effect of mass reproduction and media.
With the critical turn away from abstract art in the 1970s and 1980s, interest in painting's objecthood waned as postmodernism shifted its focus from the formalist and experiential concerns of earlier decades toward conceptual and narrative practices engaging sociopolitical and theoretical issues. This shift led artists to favor more traditional formats or experiment with new media, both of which better suited these emerging priorities. Amidst this transformation, a new wave of abstract painting emerged, exemplified by artists such as Lydia Dona and Jonathan Lasker, who sought to reinvigorate painterly practice by heterogeneously expanding its conceptual and material possibilities. While figures such as Peter Halley, Moira Dryer, and Steven Parrino continued to employ unconventional formats--expanding painting's boundaries in line with postmodernism's eclecticism and appropriation--most artists embraced approaches that required fewer formal innovations and more readily accommodated conceptual and narrative objectives. As digital media and screen-based art rose to prominence, the rectangle once again became the standard format due to industrial standards.
Despite its breadth, this history of shaped painting remains little told within the history of Modernism, and generations of artists have consequently been deprived of the discourse on how shaped and material innovations can accommodate and enhance both conceptual and cognitive ambitions. Given this context, The Shape of Painting addresses the multifaceted ways artists have engaged with the physical presence of painting to foster a dynamic interplay between viewer and artwork. Each work presented embodies a distinct approach and strategic intent; indexically, they do not represent a comprehensive list of such approaches, as this exhibition is not intended to be encyclopedic. Nor are the works included meant to be iconic--each is instead a prime example of a particular strategy. As such, each of these works serves as a model of how painters, without abandoning the frontality of abstract painting, have utilized the shaping of their supports to reorder the viewer's assumptions about what they perceive to be an abstract painting. In this way, the physical boundaries and forms of the substrates become integral to the perception, experience, and potential meaning of the work--making the support as essential as what occurs on its surface.
Notable omissions from this exhibition include representative works by European, South American, and Latin American practitioners of Art Concrete. Also missing are the singular contributions of Kenneth Noland (formalism), Zilia Sánchez (evocative shaped canvases), Leon Polk Smith (disrupted patterns), Ellsworth Kelly (color and form), Charles Hinman (illusionistic constructions), Robert Mangold (irregular variants), Ronald Davis (trompe l'oeil effects), and Carmen Herrera (precise geometry). Frank Stella is a major exclusion, given his work is the default reference in this discussion; his 1958, black pinstripe paintings and later assemblages are widely credited with introducing the shape of painting and its objecthood into the critical discourse in the US. Additionally, because this exhibition focuses on shaping as an aspect of abstract painting, such artists as Larry Rivers, Alex Katz, Elizabeth Murray, and Tom Wesselmann are not represented.
The ten models represented here are:
Shaping the Field
Ron Gorchov's distinctive saddle-shaped canvases literally reshape the field of painting. By curving the support in two directions, Gorchov transforms the painting from a flat surface into a sculptural object, redefining the space it occupies. The shaped field envelops the viewer, making the act of looking an immersive experience.
Optical Logic
Li Trincere's shaped canvases are meticulously designed to engage perception through optical logic. The geometry of the support interacts with color surfaces and forms to generate dynamic visual effects. As a result, the physical shape of the painting becomes a central element in shaping the viewer's optical experience, foregrounding the interplay between image and object.
Structure as Image
Harvey Quaytman's paintings foreground the structure of the painting as a self-referential image, realized through his use of shaped supports. His "rocker" canvases employ steam-bent wood and non-rectilinear formats, ensuring the geometry of the support is inseparable from the image itself. Here, the painting's structure becomes both its physical presence and its pictorial logic.
Literal and Intuitive
Joanna Pousette-Dart's shaped supports function as both a means to emphasize the concrete materiality of painting and an expansive ground for her expressive compositional interventions. The resulting works embody this dual commitment: to the physical form--the painting's objecthood--and to the intuitive, improvisational character of her compositions.
Architectural
Ted Stamm's shaped supports are informed by industrial design and architectural forms. His Zephyr series employs irregular, angular canvases echoing the geometry of high-speed trains. The support's shape serves as a primary compositional element, while its placement frames the painting as an intervention within both the cognitive field and architectural space.
Parts to the Whole
Gwenael Kerlidou's works consist of multiple shaped canvases that fit together. By fragmenting his imagery, he underscores the relationship between individual parts and the unified whole they compose. The boundaries and intersections among these elements foster a dynamic dialogue within the composition. At the same time, Kerlidou integrates the wall as an active participant, making it essential to the artwork's meaning and unity. This approach foregrounds the fragmented nature of perception itself.
Making Itself
Russell Maltz's works are constructed from industrial materials, emphasizing the process of their making. The forms are not only records of their own construction but also of their interaction with gravity. The painting emerges as a self-referential object, foregrounding process and perception as inseparable from the finished work.
Collage
Ruth Root's approach to collage extends beyond layered imagery to encompass the physical assembly of shaped supports. By joining panels of different shapes and materials, Root creates works in which the substrate itself functions as a collage. This method blurs the distinction between painting and object, emphasizing the artwork's constructed and assembled nature.
Fractured Form
David Row constructs his supports by cutting and angling canvas or employing modular segments. These literal, physical objects foundationally crop and interrupt his imagery, resulting in fragmentary or variable compositions. Row's approach emphasizes the interplay between perception and cognition--how we assemble incomplete fragments into sensical wholes.
Support & Surface
Joe Overstreet's work investigates the relationship between support and surface. His shaped canvases, often suspended or stretched on unconventional supports or in unconventional ways, challenge painting's traditional wall-bound format. In these works, the support becomes a visible, active participant, emphasizing the painting as a constructed object--composed of both a surface and its support.
***
1. 1986 Painting Between Awareness and Desire, Gallerie Ramel, Koln, Germ.
2. Painting Between the Paradigms Sacred and the Profane, Cyrus Gallery, NYC
3. Diagrams and Surrogates, Shea and Beker, NYC
4. 1987 Shaped, Stacked and Pierced, Saxon Lee Gallery, LA (missing)
5. Simple in Appearances, Marc Richards Gallery, LA
6. 1988 A Category of Objects as Yet Un-Named, Pennine Hart Gallery, NYC
7. 1997 Divergent Models*, KunstVerein, Wiesbadan, Germany
8. 2025 The Shape of Painting Resnick// Passlof Foundation NYC
A Strategy for the Next Painting*, Jamie Wolff Gallery, NYC and Richard Feigen Gallery, Chicago
2. 1996 Painting in an Expanding Field, Bennington College, Vt.
3. 1996 Painting All over Again * Galleria Zaragosa, Catalania
4. 2000 Painting Function, Making it real again, Spaces, Cleveland Ohio *
5. 2002 Supports / Surfaces: Prescient, Now and Then, David Dorsky Projects, LIC, NY
6. 2019 Position Matter, Jean Luc Richard Gallery/ Minus Space, NYC
7. 2019 Specific Form 1950-70 Lorretta Howard Gallery NYC
