Joe Goode

Background Joe Goode was born on March 23, 1937, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, immediately following the Dust Bowl period and at the tail end of The Great Depression. His family was Roman Catholic, and his parents divorced when Joe was 11 years old. He has a younger brother named Dick who was born twelve months after him. His father had a great influence on his artistry. He too was an artist who made signage for a department store in town and painted portraits. The two would sketch various actors on screen when the family got a television and Goode would attempt to emulate his father’s ability to capture likenesses. He married fellow student Judy Winans in 1960, together they had a daughter and divorced two years later. On March 22, 2025, Goode died one day before his 88th birthday.

Early career In December 1959, Goode traveled to Los Angeles, California, and began to make his name in the Los Angeles art scene. He embraced American pop art. He became part of a group of young artists living and working in California; this group included notable artists, such as Ken Price, Ed Kienholz, and Ronald Davis.

The American pop scene had a fascination with modern consumer culture and utilized the subject matter in many of their works. Goode and his contemporaries were also interested in graphic images, like those being created at Gemini Ltd. (now Gemini G.E.L.), an artists‘ printmaking workshop dedicated to collaborating with artists to produce artistic prints, lithographs, and other graphic art. The exhibition, "The New Paintings of Common Objects," was an early display of the art movement eventually referred to as Pop Art.

Other exhibitions and shows Goode had been exhibiting his work in group and solo exhibitions since 1960. His very first group show, two years prior to "The New Paintings of Common Objects," took place in Oklahoma City at the Oklahoma Art Center. His first solo exhibition took place in 1962 in Los Angeles, CA, at the Dilexi Gallery.

Style Goode’s style vacillates between both traditional and non-traditional forms of media which allowed him to toe the line between representational art and abstraction. His use of media also lends to a deeper exploration of differing ways of seeing the world. Examples of this were his milk bottles that act as a lens atop a field of color. This object also exemplified his affinity for simplistic, unassuming subject matter. His tendency of rending or tearing away a superficial canvas to expose another painting below also furthered this desire to show a different way of seeing the world. Prior to these large scale paintings he was creating small drawings, so the milk bottle series marks a dramatic shift in his art making. Goode spoke about a specific painting in this series called Leroy which measured roughly ten feet with three milk bottles represented. Due to its sheer size it had to be destroyed because the artist could not fit the painting into his studio.

Clouds series Clouds is thought to be the height of Goode's artistic career and the paintings in this series harken back to Romanticism. Within Clouds, there are three distinct variations. From 1967 to 1969 Goode produced his Photo Clouds series, while Torn Clouds was produced from years 1970 to 1976, and Vandalized Clouds was simultaneously painted from 1971 to 1975. Each cluster dealt with the subject matter differently. Photo Clouds demonstrates a surreal quality, Torn Clouds begins to tear away at the canvas to reveal what's below, and Vandalized Clouds is sharply biting as the soft ethereal clouds are interrupted by deep slashes in the canvas down to the cardboard underneath. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Boise Art Museum, Boise, Idaho Cantor Art Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California Museums Sheffield, Sheffield, England National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California Smithsonian Institution / Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

Solo exhibitions 1962: Dilexi Gallery, Los Angeles, California 1966: Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, California 1970: Galerie Neuendorf, Cologne, Germany; Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, California 1971: Galerie Neuendorf, Hamburg, Germany; Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA; Mueller Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany; Wall Reliefs, Pomona College Art Gallery, Claremont, California; Galleria Milano, Milan, Italy Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, Minneapolis, MN; Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Recent Paintings, Corcoran and Corcoran, Coral Gables, FL; Contract Graphics, Houston, TX 1976: Ex–Ray Drawings, James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles, California; Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, California; Joe Goode: Recent Work, Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, Missouri 1978: Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Graphic Works Retrospective, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Texas Gallery, Houston, TX 1987: Joe Goode: Milk Bottle Paintings 1961-1962, Pence Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 1989: The Ocean Blues, Compass Rose Gallery, Chicago, IL; New Paintings: The Ocean Blue Series, James Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 1990: Joe Goode: Waterfall Paintings, James Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 1991: Joe Goode: From Blue and Black Series, Takada Gallery, San Francisco, CA 1992: Joe Goode: New Paintings and Drawings, James Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Joe Goode, Karsten Greve Gallery, Paris, France; Laboratory: Joe Goode Tornado Triptych, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Joe Goode, Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, NY 1993: Tornado Paintings and Works on Paper, Takada Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Tornadoes, Soma Gallery, San Diego, CA 1994: Joe Goode: Pollution Paintings, LA Louver, Venice, CA; Shasta College, Redding, CA 1995: Painting & Paper Work, Nantenshi Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 1996: Global Warming: Pollution Paintings, LA Louver, Venice, CA 1997: Joe Goode, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; Joe Goode: Retrospective of Paper Works, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1998: Joe Goode: New Paintings, Takada Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Suns of Bitches, Moons of Dogs, LA Louver, Venice, CA; Works on Paper 1960-1973, Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1999: Paintings, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA; Joe Goode: Cause and Effect Paintings, Frederick Spratt Gallery, San Jose, CA 2000: Recent Paintings, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, NY; Joe Goode, LA Louver, Venice, CA 2001: The Cloud Paintings, Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA 2002: Cloud; Paintings from 1965 to Present, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Joe Goode, Texas Gallery, Houston, TX; LA Louver, Venice, CA; Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA; Plain Air, Bobbie Greenfield Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2003: New Paintings, Shoshana Wayne, Santa Monica, CA 2004: Surface Paintings, Texas Gallery, Houston, TX 2005: X-RAY DRAWINGS, Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; BURN OUT!, Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Joe Goode, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2007: New Work, Texas Gallery, Houston, TX 2008: JOEDONTNO, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, England; Ashes, DNJ Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Paint IS Nature, Seiler & Mosseri-Marlio Gallerie, Zurich, Switzerland 2009: Joe Goode: Clouds, Paintings and Drawings from the 60’s and 70’s, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, NY 2010: Joe Goode, Texas Gallery, Houston, TX; Golden Dreams, Greenfield Sacks Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2011: Nighttime, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2012: Joe Goode, Texas Gallery, Houston, TX 2014: Joe Goode, Texas Gallery, Houston, TX; Flat Screen Nature, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2015: There’s Always Tomorrow, Van Doren Waxter, New York, NY; Joe Goode, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Tip of the Iceberg, Leslie Sacks Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA; Moonglows & Fireflies, Koki Arts, Tokyo, Japan 2016: Joe Goode, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA; Curtain Calls, Texas Gallery, Houston, TX 2017: Joe Goode, Leslie Sacks Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Old Ideas with New Solutions, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2018: Joe Goode, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA 2019: Environmental Impacts, Leslie Sacks Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

Awards and grants American Foundation of Artists American Federation of Arts Award, 1966 Cassandra Foundation Copley Foundation, 1967 Ford Foundation Prize, 1963 Maestro Grant, California Arts Council National Endowment for the Arts