Douglas Huebler, Dead Reckoning, 1964, oil on canvas
While Douglas Huebler is known as a conceptual artist who returned to making objects via text paintings, he is not known as an abstract painter. So it was fascinating to come across this painting in the Pérez Art Museum's permanent collection.
Huebler did have a somewhat recent exhibition (2017) at the Paula Cooper Gallery of his work from the sixties, but that revisionist show comprised minimalist-influenced sculpture.
Dead Reckoning (1964) seems an anomaly then. And it perhaps answers at least a couple of questions concerning why Huebler went on to become a conceptual artist. The painting's colouration is muddily unresolved, yet it's tight angular composition and geometrically-shaped canvas seem to herald the new image painting movement of the seventies and eighties, especially the painterly but hard-edged, sculptural paintings of Elizabeth Murray. Huebler, ahead of his time yet short on technical or aesthetic resolve, was bent to be a first generation conceptual artist.
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