Ted Stamm

Ted Stamm
Born	1944 Brooklyn, New York
Died	1984 New York, New York
Nationality	American
Known for	Painting, Conceptual Art
Awards	John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fellowship in Painting (1983) and the National Endowment for the Arts, Fellowship in Painting (1981-82)
Website	http://tedstamm.com

Ted Stamm (1944–1984) was an American painter identified with the movement of monochrome painting, minimalism, and conceptual art. He is best known for his abstract, shaped canvases.

Early life and career

Ted Stamm was born in Brooklyn in 1944. At age eleven, his family moved to Freeport, Long Island, where he spent the remainder of his youth. He enrolled in Hofstra University ^[1] in the mid-1960s, where he began by studying graphic design. He quickly moved into painting studying with artists Perle Fine and John Hopkins. He also studied printmaking with artist Richard Pugliese, who later introduced him to the Soho art world. Stamm moved to Soho permanently upon graduating from Hofstra University in 1968.

Between 1968-1972, Stamm produced lyrical abstract paintings consisting of poured red, blue, and pink paint on canvas. In the summer of 1972, he began to cover up these earlier works with grids-like patterns of black marks; he referred to these as his cancel paintings.^[2] Inspired by the late work of Ad Reinhardt, Stamm consistently used the color black in his paintings from this moment forward. He associated black with rebellion, rigor, and reduction.^[3]

Work

In 1973, Stamm began making conceptually-driven work based on chance systems – rolling dice or spinning a roulette wheel – that would determine the format and number of painting layers for a specific work. In 1974, he started working with shaped stretchers and introduced the element of line into his paintings.^[4] A year later, Stamm produced his “Wooster” series inspired by a form he had seen on Wooster Street where he lived. Simultaneously, he also began his “Dodger” paintings named after the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. The curved forms and right angles used in these paintings were derived from the shape of a baseball field diamond.

Increasingly engrossed by the concept of speed, the aerodynamic ^[5] design of cars, trains, and airplanes, and the Modernist charge to reinvent painting for future generations, Stamm began developing his “C-Dodger” paintings in the last 1970s. The “C” in the title referred to the supersonic aircraft The Concorde, which Stamm would often travel to see arrive and depart at John F. Kennedy International Airport in NYC. Similarly, his “Zephyr” paintings begun in 1979 were informed by the futuristic, stainless steel train that set a speed record for travel between Denver and Chicago in 1934. His later paintings “ZCTs” and “CDDs” from early 1980s hybridized various elements from his earlier “Wooster” and “Dodger” works.

During his career, Stamm was also engaged in making highly experimental works produced in collaboration with other artists and individuals. His “Tag” pieces enlisted the participation of visitors to his studio who were asked to make a mark of their choosing onto a found garment tag that was glued down onto a page in a sketchbook. Stamm would respond to this mark in a second sketchbook of the same design. Both pages were then stamped with the date and other collateral information to create a record of their exchange.

Starting in the mid-1970s, Stamm also made proto-graffiti street interventions, which he termed “Designators”. Using a small stencil of his “Dodger” shape, he painted the shape in black on buildings and other locations in NYC that had personal significance to him. When he returned to a specific site and saw that his original mark had been altered, he would paint the shape again in silver. On his third visit, he would stencil a black “T” on the silver shape. On his fourth and final visit, he would add a second “T”, this time in silver.

In one of his few written statements about his work, Stamm asserts “my work deals with an idealism which announces and supports the advancement of the Art & Language, specifically painting”. More than 25 years after his death, it is clear that Stamm’s persona and character, his optimism about painting’s enduring possibilities and future advancement, and his expanded practice both in and out of the studio were of great significance to his artist contemporaries. His work also anticipated the conceptual strategies and material inquiries of subsequent generations of artists who came of age in NYC during the past three decades.

Exhibitions

Throughout his life Stamm continued showing his work nationally and Internationally. Stamm had his first one man show at Artists Space, New York in 1975 at the age of 31. Later that year he had his first show in Europe at Galerie December in Dusseldorf, Germany. In 1977, Stamm was included by curator Manfred Schneckenburger in Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany as well as in the seminal Painting Show at MoMA PS1 in New York. In 1981 Stamm had a solo exhibition at the Clocktower Gallery presenting work from 1972 to 1980 organized by Per Haubro Jensen.^[6] The Clocktower Gallery in Tribeca was part of MoMA PS1 under the umbrella of Institute for Art and Urban Resources. In 1986 the Hillwood Gallery at C.W. Post College mounted a retrospective exhibition of Stamm’s work. The work has been included in numerous group shows at museums such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Denver Art Museum, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark and Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

Collections

Stamm’s work is included in numerous public collections: Museum of Modern Art, (MoMA) New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum Weblink,^[7] Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, Museum of Contemporary Art, (MoCA) Los Angeles, CA and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.

Recognition

A recipient of numerous honors, Stamm has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fellowship in Fine Arts (1983) and the National Endowment for the Arts, Fellowship in Painting (1981–82).

Literature

• Ted Stamm: Marianne Boesky by Robert Pincus-Witten, Artforum, Summer 2013
• Revisions: Another Alan Uglow and Ted Stamm’s Minimalisms review by Saul Ostrow, Art Experience New York City 2013
• Book Re-Dact by Peter Frank, Willis Locker & Owens, January 1983, ISBN 093027900X
• Ted Stamm Painting Advance 1990, Essay by Tiffany Bell, CW Post College Catalogue

References

External links

• Times Square Show Revisited at Hunter Galleries, 2012
• Ted Stamm Official Website
• Ted Stamm Artist Page on Facebook