John Newman

John Newman is an American sculptor. He was born in Flushing, Queens in 1952. He received his B.A. from Oberlin College. He attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1972 and received his M.F.A. in 1975 from the Yale School of Art. New York, the Tate Modern in London, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the Albertina in Vienna, and the Storm King Art Center, New York, among many others.

Newman is the recipient of many awards and residencies, including the Rome Prize, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and a Senior Research Fulbright Grant to India. In 2015, he completed a residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.

Newman is the former director of graduate studies in sculpture at the Yale School of Art. He currently teaches at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He has been commissioned to do several large-scale sculptures for the City of Richmond, Virginia, Dai Nippon in Tokyo, Storm King Art Center, and Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey.

In print

In his interview with Newman, which was published in the April 2012 issue of The Brooklyn Rail, its co-founder Phong Bui addressed his use of different materials and techniques, including Calcutta basket weaving, Bengali brass casting, and hariko techniques, to mix them up with practices from the West. In response, Newman said:

"I want to be very careful not to be a cultural tourist! I’m the filter of all of those experiences, which only occurs after I am back in the studio. [...] traveling allowed me to step out of the concealed contradictions that are embedded within a system; in this case the system is the art world, where so many of my contemporaries were making art about art, or how art connects to larger spheres of contexts, meaning the gallery space, the gallery system, or art’s possible social relevancy..."

In his Selected Writings, the artist Carroll Dunham notes about Newman's work:

"Newman’s mature work has evolved in methodical opposition to these commandments. It is intimate, materially omnivorous, hyper-spatially curvy, dissonantly evocative, eccentrically constructed, and defiantly connected to a notion of sculpture as abstract statuary, a three-dimensional site of anthropomorphized contemplation (the sort of art Ad Reinhardt described as “something you back into when you’re looking at a painting”)."

Solo exhibitions

Newman has exhibited his work since 1977. His earliest national shows were hosted by the CUNY Graduate Center Mall, New York and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 2016, the Beeler Gallery at Columbus College of Art and Design, in Columbus, Ohio, hosted “Possible in Principle.” In 2013, the Jaffe-Friede Gallery at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire hosted “Everything is on the Table.” Newman's exhibition “Instruments of Argument” was hosted by the New York Studio School Gallery In 2005, his exhibition entitled "Monkey Wrenches and Household Saints" was shown at the Clifford Gallery at Colgate University (catalogue). In addition, he exhibited at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1999), Grounds for Sculpture, Johnson Atelier, Mercerville, New Jersey (1998), Tyler Graphics, Mt. Kisco, New York (catalogue) (1995), Ft. Wayne Museum of Art, Ft. Wayne, Indiana (1993); Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock (catalogue)(1993), Reed College, Portland, Oregon (1981), and many others.

Statement

In 2013, Newman stated: "People often misunderstand my work as surreal, because they see these disparate things. And because it’s not seemingly geometric or representational, it’s something that is not easily categorizable.” Chase Manhattan Bank Chemical Bank Colby College Museum, Maine Dallas Museum of Art Dannheiser Foundation Department of Transportation, Washington, DC Deutsche Bank Des Moines Art Center Farnsworth Museum of Art, Maine Fidelity Investments First Bank System, Inc., Minneapolis The Fogg Art Museum Fort Wayne Museum General Mills Corporation Grand Rapids Museum High Museum Honolulu Museum of Art Hood Museum, Dartmouth College Joslyn Museum, Omaha, NE Library of Congress, DC List Center for the Visual Arts, MIT Los Angeles County Museum of Art McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX Mellon Bank, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Museum of Art Minneapolis Institute of Arts Mississippi Museum Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa The Morgan Library Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Museum of Modern Art The Nasher Collection, Dallas The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University National Academy Museum National Gallery of Berlin National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Linda Yablonsky, "Why Small Sculpture is Big", Artnews, December

2003

Roberta Smith, "John Newman", New York Times, Friday, May 30" Sandra Wolfer, "Sculptures find niche at seniors' home", Daily news, July 3 Roy Proctor, “Look up in the sky!”, Richmond Times Dispatch, Nov. 14th Paulette Roberts-Pullen, “Art around us”, Style Weekly, Richmond, Virginia, Nov. 26th

2001

Janet Koplos, "John Newman at Von Lintel and Nusser", Art in America, November

Grace Glueck, "John Newman: Homespun", New York Times, Friday, May 18

Linda Yablonsky, "John Newman: Homespun", TimeOut, May 3–10, 2001

Mario Naves, "Creepy Fetishes, Lazy Eyes, Bad Boys in the West 20's", New York Observer

Daniel Rothbart,"The Protean Forms of John Newman", NY Arts, April, Vol. 6, No. 4

Edith Newhall, "Talent-Material Culture", New York Magazine, May 7, 2001,

Will Jones, "Station's sculpture stirs up a buzz", Richmond Times-Dispatch, Nov. 22

H. Peter Stern and others, "Earth, Sky and Sculpture: Storm King Art Center"

Raphael Rubinstein, "A Stealth Revolution in Sculpture: John Newman", catalogue essay for GrandArts exhibition

Nancy Princenthal, " Homespun", catalogue essay for Edition Von Lintel and Nusser

Robin Trafton, ""C" is for Contrast", Kansas City Star, Dec. 7th, 2001

Janet Purcell, "Grounds for Celebration", Trenton Times, June 14