John Newman (sculptor)
John Newman is an American sculptor. He was born in Flushing, Queens in 1952. He received his B.A. from Oberlin College (1973). He attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1972 and received his M.F.A. in 1975 from the Yale School of Art. He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT from 1975 to 1978. He is based in New York City. Career. Newman came of age as a sculptor in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He has had over 50 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions in  galleries and museums throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. His sculptures, drawings, and prints are represented in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Tate Modern in London, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the Albertina in Vienna, and the Storm King Art Center, New York, among many others. Newman is the recipient of many awards and residencies, including the Rome Prize, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and  a Senior Research Fulbright Grant to India. In 2015, he completed a residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Newman is the former director of graduate studies in sculpture at the Yale School of Art. He currently teaches at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He has been commissioned to do several large-scale sculptures for the City of Richmond, Virginia, Dai Nippon in Tokyo, Storm King Art Center, and Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey. In print. In his interview with Newman, which  was published in the April 2012 issue of "The Brooklyn Rail", its co-founder Phong Bui addressed his use of different materials and techniques, including Calcutta basket weaving, Bengali brass casting, and hariko techniques, to mix them up with practices from the West. In response, Newman said: ""I want to be very careful not to be a cultural tourist! I’m the filter of all of those experiences, which only occurs after I am back in the studio. [...] traveling allowed me to step out of the concealed contradictions that are embedded within a system; in this case the system is  the art world, where so many of my contemporaries were making art about art, or how art connects to larger spheres of contexts, meaning the gallery space, the gallery system, or art’s possible social relevancy"..." In his "Selected Writings", the artist Carroll Dunham notes about Newman's work: ""Newman’s mature work has evolved in methodical opposition to these commandments. It is intimate, materially omnivorous, hyper-spatially curvy, dissonantly evocative, eccentrically constructed, and defiantly connected to a notion of sculpture as abstract statuary, a three-dimensional site of anthropomorphized contemplation (the sort of art Ad Reinhardt described as “something  you back into when you’re looking at a painting”")." Solo exhibitions. Newman has exhibited his work since 1977. His earliest national shows were hosted by the CUNY Graduate Center Mall, New York and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2016, the Beeler Gallery at Columbus College of Art and Design, in Columbus, Ohio, hosted “Possible in Principle.” In 2013, the Jaffe-Friede Gallery at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire hosted “Everything is on the Table.” Newman's exhibition “Instruments of Argument” was hosted by the New York Studio School Gallery in 2009 and in  2007, the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, presented an exhibition as well. In 2005, his exhibition entitled "Monkey Wrenches and Household Saints" was shown at the Clifford Gallery at Colgate University (catalogue). In addition, he exhibited at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1999), Grounds for Sculpture, Johnson Atelier, Mercerville, New Jersey (1998), Tyler Graphics, Mt. Kisco, New York (catalogue) (1995), Ft. Wayne Museum of Art, Ft. Wayne, Indiana (1993); Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock (catalogue)(1993), Reed College, Portland, Oregon (1981), and many others. Statement. In 2013, Newman stated: "People often misunderstand my work as surreal , because they see these disparate things. And because it’s not seemingly geometric or representational, it’s something that is not easily categorizable.” Bibliography. 2020 Sarah Bahr, Ensnared by the Fine Art of Scam”, NY Times, Oct. 12t 2016 Will Heinrich, “Art in Review: John Newman and Jo Nigoghossian,” NY Times, Nov. 18th Carroll Dunham, “Into words: the collected writings of Carroll Dunham: John Newman”, Badlands Unlimited Anderson Turner, “Intersections at Akron Art Museum will expand your horizons,” Akron Beacon Journal, October, 14th 2014 R.C. Baker, “The New Surreal”, Village Voice, May 14–20, Vol. LIX, No. 20 Peter Frank , “Get your Quick and Dirty Arts Education Haiku”, Huffington Post, September 5 2013 Ken Johnson, “ Going Solo Has Its Day, in a Hodgepodge Style”, New York Times, March 8 2012 “John Newman and B. Wurtz”, BOMB, No. 120, Summer 2012 “In conversation: John Newman with Phong Bui”, The Brooklyn Rail, April Peter Plagens, “Balancing Grit with Wit”, Wall St. Journal, March 17-18th 2009 Roberta Smith, “John Newman”’ New York Times, February 27th Stephen Mueller, “John Newman: New York Studio School”, Art in America, May Ben La Rocco, “John Newman”, The Brooklyn Rail, March Stephanie Buhmann, “Exploratory Territories”, The Villager , Volume 78, Number 37 February 18–24 2006 Roberta Smith, "Critic's Notebook: Chelsea Is a battlefield: Galleries Muster Groups”, New York Times, July 28 David Cateforis, "John Newman at the Byron C. Cohen Gallery", REVIEW, December 2006 Ken Johnson, "From carved creatures to Disneyland rugs", Boston Globe, September 26 Stephanie Buhmann, "Review", Sculpture Magazine, April 2006, Vol. 25, No.3 2005 Laurie Simmons, "Artists on Artists". BOMB, Summer 2005, Number 92 Linda Yablonsky, "Why Small Sculpture is Big", Artnews, December 2003 Roberta Smith, "John Newman", New York Times, Friday, May 30" Sandra Wolfer, "Sculptures find niche at seniors' home", Daily news , July 3 Roy Proctor, “Look up in the sky!”, Richmond Times Dispatch, Nov. 14th Paulette Roberts-Pullen, “Art around us”, Style Weekly, Richmond, Virginia, Nov. 26th 2001 Janet Koplos, "John Newman at Von Lintel and Nusser", Art in America, November Grace Glueck, "John Newman: Homespun", New York Times, Friday, May 18 Linda Yablonsky, "John Newman: Homespun", TimeOut, May 3–10, 2001 Mario Naves, "Creepy Fetishes, Lazy Eyes, Bad Boys in the West 20's", New York Observer Daniel Rothbart,"The Protean Forms of John Newman", NY Arts, April, Vol. 6, No. 4 Edith Newhall, "Talent-Material Culture", New York Magazine, May 7 , 2001 Will Jones, "Station's sculpture stirs up a buzz", Richmond Times-Dispatch, Nov. 22 H. Peter Stern and others, "Earth, Sky and Sculpture: Storm King Art Center" Raphael Rubinstein, "A Stealth Revolution in Sculpture: John Newman", catalogue essay for GrandArts exhibition Nancy Princenthal, " Homespun", catalogue essay for Edition Von Lintel and Nusser Robin Trafton, ""C" is for Contrast", Kansas City Star, Dec. 7th, 2001 Janet Purcell, "Grounds for Celebration", Trenton Times, June 14