JOEL BASS ARTIST

Letter from Lisa Bass

An artist active from the 1960’s through 1980’s on the New York, Paris and Los Angeles art scenes, my husband, Joel Bass, died on February 5th 2019. The day before his memorial service on July 5, 2019 an article appeared in the New York Times entitled, “Where Does Major American Art Come From? Mapping the Whitney Biennial” in this piece Joel is noted as one of the major American Artists of the last century.

Peter Plagens, in a 1974 piece that appeared in Artforum wrote of Joel, “But it occurred to Joel Bass that just four parts – the elemental grid – could function as well as three dozen; so he narrowed it down and, in 1969 – 70, arrived at his ‘trademark’ colored grid...Bass’ pictures are austere, subtle, economical and knowledgeable, but in their openness, they admit to the slipperiness of the whole problem of ‘straight’ abstract painting.”

Writing for Artweek in 1984, Lorna Carlin saw Joel’s work in this way, “His first solo in 1970 already demonstrated an acumen in working through format problems, and over the past decade, he has remained tenaciously aligned with the challenge of creating art through the intellect, rather than abstracting from nature.”

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