The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

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January 7, 1968 to March 17, 1968 |

Cool Art – 1967

Cool Art – 1967 is the Aldrich Museum’s first attempt in its three-year history to present the flavor of a significant new movement in today’s art. No really adequate descriptive title has been found yet for the “cool.” Critics and artists alike have discarded “minimal,” “miniart,” “primary structures,” “new abstractions,” “ABC art,” “abstract imagists,” “simplistic,” “new esthetics,” etc.

In any event, Cool Art might be described as that art which specifically embraces space, science, and technology. It is impersonal, sophisticated, intellectual, non-illusory, monumental, classic, reductive, simplified, objective, direct, elegant, calculated, non-arty, nuance-full, and has intense physicality.

The cool artist cooperates with modern technology. He may send his drawing or model to a fabricator who will make the piece for him. He readily uses plastics, fiberglass, aluminum, formica, extruded alloys, and new methods of shaping and forming metals. He turns away from the emotionalism of the 50s with its disordered chanciness. He is the child of Malevich, Mondrian, Barnett Newman, David Smith, Tony Smith, and Ad Reinhardt. He studies and explores new concepts of space, mathematics, engineering structure, and physics.

Whenever we could, we selected work created in 1967.

Artists: Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, Jon Baldwin, Bennett Bean, Bill Bollinger, Roger Bolomey, Walter De Maria, Peter Forakis, Paul Frazier, Daniel Gorski, Douglas Huebler, Will Insley, Patricia Johanson, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Lyman Kipp, Joseph Konzal, Gary Kuehn, Tadaaki Kuwayama, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, John McCracken, Clement Meadmore, Ursula Meyer, Forrest Myers, Antoni Milkowski, Paul Mogensen, Barnett Newman, Carlus Dyer, Eduardo Paolozzi, Ad Reinhardt, Salvatore Romano, Charles Ross, Edwin Ruda, Robert Smithson, Michael Steiner, Frank Stella, Tal Streeter, Richard Van Buren, Christopher Wilmarth, Derrick Woodham

Links

Exhibition Catalogue