Untitled
March 26, 2018
Howardena Pindell, Untitled, 1976
This 1976 lithograph by Howardena Pindell is exemplary of her early works that incorporate numbers and signs. On handmade translucent paper, Pindell created a composition filled with both chaos and order, exhibiting an activity that radiates energy. She cultivated a slight sense of depth in this 2D work by layering paper, allowing the smaller sheet to create a border over the larger one. Numbers, arrows, and dots make up her symbolic vocabulary, although they do not necessarily hold any significant meaning. It is worthy to note, however, that Pindell grew up with a mathematician for a father, so her comfortability and ability to find order within spontaneity comes as no surprise.
Her oeuvre is known for its captivating effect as her works demonstrate stretched boundaries of process and material, best evident in her famous paintings that are composed of hole punches, glitter, and spurts of perfume. In her ‘feminist artist statement’ for the Brooklyn Museum, Pindell writes, “my use of odd materials also came through the influence of work that I saw exhibited within the feminist community,” acknowledging the environment she met when she first entered the New York art scene.
She received her BFA (cum laude) from Boston University, and her MFA from Yale University. She has also been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and Parsons School of Design in New York. In 1967 she landed a job at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and there she eventually became one of the museum’s first black curators. Today she is a professor at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
Written by Danielle Cervera Bidigare