Rackstraw Downes paints down-to-earth, often gritty features of today's American environment in an unflinching and highly realistic style. This book is the first to provide a multifaceted picture of his work, its intellectual foundations, and its place in the history of art--from both outside commentators and Downes himself.
 Beautifully illustrated, with copious examples from thirty years of the artist's work, the book makes eminently clear why Downes is widely regarded as a "painter's painter." It showcases many of the artist's panoramic pictures--painted with a strong sense of place and a miniaturist's sense of scale. The images, which depict industrial parks, construction sites, housing projects, refineries, razor wire, and landfills, stimulate fresh thoughts about these supposedly unattractive sights. Bathed in the light of a precise time, the paintings resonate with a strikingly evocative quality.
 The three essays that accompany Downes's art provide rare insights into the way a painter thinks and works. Sanford Schwartz explores the relationships between the artist's personal and intellectual background and his oeuvre. Robert Storr situates Downes in the context of a number of highly prominent contemporary artists such as Chuck Close, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Jasper Johns, Gerhard Richter, and Robert Smithson in a way that offers a new interpretation of Downes's work, while making clear its importance within twentieth-century art. Downes's own essay, "Turning the Head in Empirical Space," presents a direct, firsthand account of his working methods within a larger discussion on spatial paradigms of Renaissance and post-Renaissance modes of painting.

Rackstraw Downes

Arts & Photography

Schwartz, Sanford

Downes, Rackstraw

STORR, Robert

History & Criticism

Princeton University Press

Rackstraw Downes: Recent work, 9 April - 3 May 1997

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Marlborough New York

Rackstraw Downes: November 5-December 1, 1987

Hirschl and Adler Modern

Under the Gowanus and Razor-wire journal: The making of two paintings, 5.9.99 - 11.15.99

Turning the Head Press

The first monograph on the architectural sculptor and installation artist and long-time collaborator with the New York School poets 
Best known for creating large-scale installation work inspired by American vernacular architecture, Dennis finds beauty in places shaped by ordinary people, which become repositories for memory and feelings. Her seemingly familiar yet often darkly mysterious sites evoke memories, encourage reflection, and allude to the transient nature of life. This book contextualizes Dennis’s work within contemporary art and the women’s movements and traces the arc of her career, tracing the evolution of her architectural sculpture over more than forty years, exploring her artistic collaborations with poets, and presenting her most recent work, a series of gouaches and dioramas, for the first time. 
A conversation between Dennis and painter Rackstraw Downes brings to life the artist’s influences through her own words. With insightful text by feminist art scholar Helaine Posner, plus commentary from Dennis on the sources and process of creating the work, this book is an essential addition to the libraries of collectors and art historians interested in the architectural sculpture movement of the 1970s, and all those interested in feminism in art.

Donna Dennis: Poet in Three Dimensions

POSNER, Helaine

Miller, Nicole

Humor & Entertainment

The Monacelli Press

In relation to the whole: Three essays from three decades, 1973, 1981, 1996 (EP)

Edgewise

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Books by Downes, Rackstraw