02/11/2025
RIP Walter. 🖤
Walter Robinson: Romance, Ci******es and More
March 1, 2019 - July 31, 2019
Reception: April 4, 5-7PM
PURE JOY is pleased to present Romance, Ci******es and More, an exhibition of work by Walter Robinson.
“Robinson’s exploitations of pop imagery succeed by failing the Pictures Generation shibboleth of ironic detachment. In his paintings, the louche sexual glamour of penny dreadfuls and the temptations of booze and junk food are palpable— only the more so, nostalgically, now that the artist is abstemious. Robinson is a Manet of hot babes and a Morandi of McDonald’s French fries and Budweiser beer cans, magnetized by his
subjects as he devotes his brush to generic painterly description.” (Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, September 26, 2016)
Walter Robinson was born in 1950 and has lived and worked in New York City since 1968. In 1973 he launched Art-Rite magazine with two collaborators, publishing
irregularly until 1977. During the same period he was a co-founder of Printed Matter, and somewhat later served as a correspondent for the cable TV show “Art TV Gallery Beat.” He began exhibiting his paintings in earnest with Collaborative Projects, participating in “The Real Estate Show” and “The Times Square Show” in 1980. In 1982 he had his first exhibition with Metro Pictures, and later showed at galleries in the East Village and elsewhere. He wrote reviews and art news for Art in America until 1996, when he became founding editor of Artnet Magazine, a post he held until 2012. He briefly wrote a column for Artspace.com, where he coined the term “Zombie Formalism” to describe a kind of process abstraction.
A legend of the downtown NYC art world. He will be missed so much by so many.
