Philip Taaffe

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Philip Taaffe (born 1955) is an American artist

We Are Not Afraid, 1985.

Taaffe was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey and studied at the Cooper Union in New York, gaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1977. His interest in the language of decoration and abstraction brought him international recognition in the 1980s, along with fellow artists such as Ross Bleckner, Terry Winters, Juan Uslé and Peter Halley.

A long time admirer of Matisse’s cut-outs and of Synthetic Cubism, from the mid 1980s he began to borrow images and designs directly from more recent artists. This appropriation of the work of others and the use of it as the subject of his own work places him alongside other contemporary "Appropriationists" such as Sherrie Levine and Mike Bidlo. In We Are Not Afraid (1985), he revisits Barnett Newman’s zip motif, developing it into a spiral; the title itself is intended as a reply to Newman’s series of paintings Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue (1966–70). In Defiance (1986), he reinterprets work by Bridget Riley to make commentary on the impersonal nature of the Op Art movement.

His first solo exhibition was in New York in 1982, and he has since been included in numerous museum exhibitions, including the Carnegie International, two Sydney Bienniales, and three Whitney Bienniales. His work is also held in several public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Taffe currently lives and works in New York City.