New Perspectives Talk: Reading Gestural Abstraction
In “Reading Gestural Abstraction,” Gabriel Ridout, PhD student in English in Arts & Sciences, discusses a pair of paintings in the Kemper Art Museum’s permanent collection. From a series that critic Thomas Hess dubbed “abstract urban landscapes,” Willem de Kooning’s Saturday Night (1956) condenses urbanity and sexuality in a turbulent froth of blues and pinks. In Amy Sillman’s Cart (2017), bold black lines lurch over and beneath diaphanous patches of red, pink, and yellow, suggesting shapes that never fully cohere. This talk puts the two gestural paintings in conversation to consider how de Kooning and Sillman approach questions of self and body in their work. Drawing from recent developments in trans studies and critical ethnic literary studies, Ridout asks, who has the luxury to abstract? Who has the right to express or not express? What might abstract gestural painting make possible for multiply marginalized subjects?
Free and open to the public. Registration is requested.
About the Speaker
Gabriel Ridout is pursuing a PhD in English at WashU. Research interests include 20th and 21st-century American art and literature, trans of color critique, affect theory, and cultural studies. At WashU, Ridout is a McDonnell Academy Scholar and a representative on the Graduate and Professional Student Council. In 2021, Ridout earned a BA with high honors in English at Wesleyan University. The winner of a 2020 Academy of American Poets University Prize, Ridout has published creative writing on poets.org, in Nightboat Books’s Permanent Record anthology, and elsewhere.
New Perspectives
New Perspectives talks are opportunities to learn more about the Museum’s collection from emerging scholars. The talks are given by graduate students in Arts & Sciences and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and focus on one or more works from the collection, often aligning with the students’ own expertise and scholarly interests.