Robert Cottingham

Robert Cottingham is known for his paintings and prints of urban American landscapes, particularly building facades, neon signs, movie marquees, and shop fronts. Cottingham began his professional artistic career as an art director for the advertising firm Young and Rubicam in the early 1960s. Although he is typically associated with Photorealism, Cottingham never considered himself a Photorealist, but rather a realist painter working in a long tradition of American vernacular scenes. He does not view his works as mere painterly translations of photographs or reproductions of reality. He has been known to change the words in his facades to alter the meaning of the subject. His primary interest lies in the subject matter—the urban American vernacular—rather than the deployment of a photo-based technique.

Cottingham’s interest in the intersections of art and commerce derive from his career as an adman and the influence of Pop art. Many of his paintings convey an interest in typography and lettering, as well as an awareness of the psychological impact of certain isolated words and letters. In his facades, techniques from advertising, namely cropping and enlarging, often produce words of enigmatic or comical resonance such as “Art,” “Ha,” or “Oh.” Cottingham’s enlarged sense of scale is reminiscent of James Rosenquist’s work, while his interest in text suggests the influence of Robert Indiana and Jasper Johns. In general, Cottingham viewed his work as continuing the legacy of Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, who also had a background in advertising.

His work has been included in significant group exhibitions, including Documenta in Kassel, and those at the Serpentine Gallery in London, Centre national d’art contemporain in Paris, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, a traveling exhibition at the National Museum of American Art (now Smithsonian American Art Museum) in Washington, D.C., Samsung Museum of Modern Art in Seoul, and Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. Cottingham’s printed oeuvre was celebrated by a solo presentation at National Museum of American Art in 1998–99.

Courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum

Painting / Photorealism

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Born 1935

Hometown Brooklyn, NY

Lives and Works Connecticut

Education

BFA, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, 1963

Permanent Collection

Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL

Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH

Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA

Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, IA

Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH

Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH

Davenport Art Gallery, Davenport, IA

Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO

Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA

Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, New York, NY

Hamburg Museum, Hamburg, Germany

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Hopkins Center Art Gallery, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN

Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA

Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

Madison Art Center, Madison, WI

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI

Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK

Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY

Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

National Academy of Design, New York, NY

National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO

New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT

New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA

Orlando Museum of Art, New Orlando, FL

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ

Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

Rutgers University, Camden, NJ

Sentra Museum, Berardo Collection, Lisbon, Portugal

St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA

Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, MO

Tate Gallery, London, England

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH

University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA

University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, KY

University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI

University of Virginia Art Museum, Charlottesville, VA

Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT

Utrecht Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

Representing Galleries

Forum Gallery, New York, NY

Works Available for Purchase

SHOWS

Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art

Miami
Dec 04 2018 - Dec 11 2018

Art Miami 2018

Articles

IFPDA Print Fair Preview - An Interview with Tandem Press

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Photorealism: Art or Craft? Richard Estes at MAD

A new exhibition on Richard Estes—the first paintings show in the museum's history—greatly emphasizes his process and technical virtuosity.