Rosemarie Castoro at the Judd Foundation

Installation view, Rosemarie Castoro: Paintings 1964-1966, April 20–June 24, 2023, 101 Spring Street, Judd Foundation, New York. Photo Timothy Doyon © Judd Foundation. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London・Paris・Salzburg・Seoul. Art © Estate of Rosemarie Castoro.

By JONATHAN GOODMAN, July 2023 

Rosemarie Castoro’s excellent show at the Judd Foundation is small–only five abstract paintings. But each of the five works is very strong, and two sets of two works are stylistically similar enough that they feel closely related–as if part of a series. Castoro, who was an acquaintance of Judd without knowing him well. In the past, The Judd Foundation has presented exhibitions that involve figures who were in contact with Judd, or aligned conceptually with him. Unlike Judd, Castoro practiced all manner of art: painting, sculpture, film, even a performance art such as dance. 

Castoro was an artist of unusual skill. In Green Black (1964), an acrylic work of good size, Castoro used angled, sometimes straight black lines that attach to each other at the ends, creating a net-like web that breaks the deep green ground of the painting into small parts, quite interesting in their own right. On one level, the painting is distinctively abstract, while on the other, it might be seen as a sharply accurate rendering of a cracked expanse of earth. Abstraction is never completely so, just as figuration inevitably contains elements of non-objective form. In another work, called Red Blue Green Purple (1964), Castoro works wonderfully well with small, semi-geometric forms, often L-shaped and taking on the colors indicated in the title. The components fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. The fit from one element to the next is close, and if you study the painting, it seems to be divided, subtly, into six or seven larger components by white lines. The smaller parts establish their own patterns–a kind of whimsical dissonance that charms more than it distances.

Installation view, Rosemarie Castoro: Paintings 1964-1966, April 20–June 24, 2023, 101 Spring Street, Judd Foundation, New York. Photo Timothy Doyon © Judd Foundation. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London・Paris・Salzburg・Seoul. Art © Estate of Rosemarie Castoro.
 

The particularly beautiful work, White Ground Over Tan (1966) has details hard to see–delicate pencil drawings, close to invisible without sustained focus, appear on a light tan background. This piece bears more than a slight resemblance to Arshile Gorky’s great work Summation (1947), whose tan ground even comes close to that produced by Castoro. But Gorky was likely more interested in pushing toward transcendent experience. One feels with this small show that Castoro was most taken with a formal approach–the formalism was of real meaning to the artist. White Ground Over Tan beautifully maps mostly hidden pencil markings that nevertheless develop an intricacy beneath the surface of the painting-it is rare to come across such extensive subtlety in contemporary art.

The largest work, vertical in orientation is an acrylic painting, called Blue Gold Interference (1966). It consists of an overall gold ground, which is embellished throughout by white, or very light blue, shards, sometimes irregular, sometimes more even-edged. They vary in size from the small to the relatively large, given the size of the painting. One has to admire this show for its prescience, and its ability to reflect the spirit of the time when they were made; even now, the paintings look close to new, as if Castoro were ahead of other artists in her understanding of painting’s future.

Although the Sixties were a time of remarkable conflict and social change, Castoro’s art stayed close to painterly discussion. This in no way diminishes the force and accomplishment of her work, which embodies the best art of her moment. The formalism inspiring all five paintings develops according to the vagaries of their own strengths, and in this case has made Castoro unusually achieved in her manner of working.

Rosemarie Castoro, Blue Gold Interference, 1965, acrylic on canvas, 87 3/4 × 96 7/8 inches (222.9cm x 246cm), Rosemarie Castoro: Paintings 1964-1966, April 20–June 24, 2023, 101 Spring Street, Judd Foundation, New York. Photo Timothy Doyon © Judd Foundation. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London・Paris・Salzburg・Seoul. Art © Estate of Rosemarie Castoro.
 

White Yellow Raw Interference (1966), a large, broad horizontal work of art, works its subtle effects with terrific ease. The tan exterior of the painting is filled with a speckled, mottled surface, free of discernible design. Yet, even so, the viewer has the feeling that Castoro imbued the work with something determined by overall control. The tension between freedom and constraint is wonderfully handled in the work, which resembles nothing so much as a mist and its inherently inchoate properties. 

Castoro’s show helps us judge the achievement of an artist whose language remained both independent and aligned with the way artists were painting at the time. This works as a strategy because, with the increasing homogenization of culture, a sense of freedom is needed to break free of the monoculture we must deal with more and more. How does an artist achieve independence in the face of uniformity? If Castoro did decide to work consciously within a tightly developed language, the freedoms she took can be understood as an effort to push convention ahead. In this painter’s case, her particularly developed sense of craft led her beyond convention–despite the fact that she never fully leaves the regularly expected.

In the sense that she rejected the sweeping egotism of many abstract paintings of the time (a legacy of 1940s art), perhaps Castoro was able to knock down the obstacle of excessive self in favor of a gifted restraint. For this writer, measure and restraint mean everything in art, and Castoro brought both to her efforts. Seen now, the paintings are still capable of exercising a beneficial effect on a new generation, one for whom formalism is nearly a mistake, rather than a way of seeing. Castoro’s unusual skill, joined to psychic subtleties, gave her work a substantial formal seriousness. WM