Lois Dodd: Framing the Ephemeral

To look is to get a grip on the environment, to put a frame around reality. That is the core of Dodd's method, everything revolves around the frame: from the window, through a doorway or with her hands. This is how she captures what she sees on the spot - a temporary cutaway of fleeting, non-repeatable moments, painted in quick brushstrokes and thin layers of paint. Dodd paints that everyday with a keen eye for vistas, light and atmosphere.

Her subjects are recognisable: hushed landscapes, night skies, an interior in a mirror, weathered barns and urban scenes - often without people, in her surroundings in New York, Maine, and at the Delaware Water Gap in New Jersey. Because she returns somewhere over and over again, she registers the smallest changes in her surroundings. She navigates subtly between figuration and abstraction, with influences of Piet Mondrian, among others, visible in her compositions of lines and planes.

Tenacious

Dodd played an important role in the art scene of post-war New York, and she was one of the founders of Tanager Gallery in the 1950s: a place where artists themselves provided space and attention to exhibit their work. She hung out with artists such as Willem de Kooning and Alex Katz and shared an aterlier building with Katz in Maine. Dodd is exceptional in her tenacity. While the art world experienced wave after wave of new movements in the second half of the 20th century - from abstract expressionism to pop art, from minimalism to conceptual art - Dodd stayed true to her own method: observing and painting what she saw. Where innovation can be mistaken for progress, Dodd shows that sticking to a personal vision is at least as powerful. Her oeuvre forms a rare beacon of calm, dedication and focus within the tumult of the 20th century. Dodd observes change at a micro level. 

Foot in the door

Although Dodd has worked continuously for almost eighty years - at the age of 98, she is still painting - it took a long time for her to gain recognition. Only in 2012 did she have her first major museum solo exhibition at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in the United States. Meanwhile, her work is included in prestigious collections such as those of MoMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington D.C. With the exhibition at Kunstmuseum Den Haag, her oeuvre is finally getting the attention it deserves in Europe. The exhibition catalogue features essays by Katy Hessel, Faye Hirsch, Vincent Katz, Lucy R. Lippard, Laura McLean-Ferris, Janice McNab, Karen Wilkin and others. Kunstmuseum Den Haag is also currently working on a documentary about Lois Dodd that will be shown in the exhibition.