Block Museum Gift - 2003

New Acquisitions: Gift of Howard and Judith Tullman

Robert Cottingham, Rialto, 1985, watercolor on paper. Gift of Howard and Judith Tullman, 2003.6.7

In watercolors, prints, and paintings, Robert Cottingham explores the milieu of American consumerism and icons of urban culture. In the watercolor Rialto (1985) Cottingham has described a familiar, but unspecified, cityscape, shown from an oblique angle. The subject of Cottingham's watercolor is cropped and fragmented, but iconic. At the same time, it evokes the brazen commercialism associated with promotional signage and the American city. Here he has transformed a nostalgic relic—a theater marquee—into an oversized emblem of twentieth-century America.

The watercolor is part of an extraordinary recent gift to the Block Museum of several drawings, a series of works by Chicago artists, and a suite of watercolors, all donated by Howard and Judith Tullman. The watercolors are examples of photorealism, popular from the 1960s through the 1980s. The works explore effects of surface and light, perception and reflection, and even the premise of realism. Cottingham's technical matery is evidenced in the crisp, flawless surface that he used to describe the garish urban colors. Rialto, like his other work, has the sharp-edged delineation resembling photography and a finished look that seems to defy the liquid properties of watercolor. Other watercolors in the gift include works by Ralph Goings, Jack Mendenhall, John Baeder, Ricahrd McLean, Robert Bechtle, and John Salt. The technical skill of the works belies the informality of construction, elevating them to remarkable displays of craftsmanship, skill, and technical control.

The extraordinary Tullman gift also includes works by Ed Paschke, Christina Ramberg, Karl Wirsum, James Valerio, and Barbara Rossi, that represent regional manifestations of irreverent late twentieth-century artistic style and attitude, particularly in Chicago. Two drawings by Robert Longo and Paul Otero complement the Block's holdings of works by contemporary artists. The Block Museum is delighted to have received the gift and looks forward to exhibiting these acquisitions soon.