Robert Cottingham: An American Alphabet

January 19, 1997 to April 20, 1997 |

Robert Cottingham: An American Alphabet was on view at The Aldrich in 1997. Through form, color, and content, the series explores the complex relationship between symbols, objects, and their representation. Known for paintings and prints of urban American landscapes depicting building facades, neon signs, movie marquees and shop fronts, Cottingham began painting the alphabet in 1993. After he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1974, the artist took a Greyhound bus excursion through the Northeast, photographing in 27 cities and gathering thousands of slides in the process, which provided the visual text for the alphabet series.

Started in 1993 and completed in February of 1996, Robert Cottingham’s series An American Alphabet stands as a major milestone in the painter’s career. Through form, color, and content, An American Alphabet functions not only as a lexicon of the artist’s main concerns over the last thirty years, but also as a meditation on the complex relationship between symbols, objects, and their representation.

Curated by Richard Klein

Top image: Robert Cottingham, A, 1996 (image from exhibition catalogue). Courtesy of Forum Gallery, New York. Part of the exhibition Robert Cottingham: An American Alphabet, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, January 19 to April 20, 1997.