Jennifer Bartlett

Jennifer Losch Bartlett (b. 1941) is an American artist. She emerged as one of the most important artists of the 1980s. She is known for paintings and prints that combine the system-based aesthetic of Conceptual art with the painterly approach of Neo-expressionism. Many of her pieces are executed on small, square, enamel-coated steel plates that are combined in grid formations to create very large works. In JENNIFER BARTLETT, Marge Goldwater, curator of the exhibition for the Walker Art Center, has contributed a chronological survey of the paintings that discusses the polarities of control and passion - the desire to master space, media, subject matter, and draftsmanship that are crucial aspects of the painter's art. In a richly illustrated article, New York art critic Roberta Smith discusses Bartlett's many architectural commissions. These remarkable installations range from a dining room in the home of British collectors Doris and Charles Saatchi - in which Bartlett employed no fewer than ten materials including a lacquer screen, mirrors, ceramic and enamel tiles - to Bartlett's other commissions - her work for Philip Johnson's AT&T Building, and her tour de force multi-media installation at the Volvo Corporation headquarters in Göteborg, Sweden.