User:John Day Art

Born in Malden Massachusetts on 27 May 1932, John Day‟s

earliest years resonated with the localised sense of want and

of the scarcity and anxiety that permeated American culture

throughout the Great Depression.

When pressed about his childhood, Day focused on the loving

relationship that he enjoyed with his grandmother, Frances

Hamblin, but the influence of his father, an anesthesiologist

and his classical pianist mother manifested in a number of

interesting and often unexpected ways as his oeuvre

developed.

Rather than open his paintings as a forum in which to process

identity, Day carefully isolated respective characteristics,

fomenting his most vulnerable personal presence through

artistic absence.

Day sold his first painting at age fifteen, and at eighteen

began his studies with Josef Albers in Yale University‟s

Department of Design.

Over the next three decades, John Day tested and explored

a number of different artistic practices, each a discrete

permutation of the theoretical and practical variables that

would allow him, ultimately, to “step out of the way”,

freeing each of his viewers to a reception unsettling in its

forceful solitude. The carefully calculated richness of Day‟s

paintings resides in their absences and exclusions and

restraint as much as in their application of paint to canvas.

In April of 1982, John Day died from complications related to

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. His untimely death

came just as his work began to articulate its most compelling aesthetic. As is the case

with each life among the millions lost of this plague over the past quarter-century, we will

never experience the fullest range of John Day‟s potential.

Stephen Caffey, Asst. Professor of Art & Architectural History, Texas A&M University.

https://www.antiques.co.uk/antique/John-Day-American-born-1932-died-1982-35

PUBLIC AND CORPORATE COLLECTIONS

Adelphi University, Garden City, New York

The American Broadcasting Company, New York, New York

American Council of Learned Societies, New York, New York

The Anderson Company, Chicago, Illinois

The Avis Corporation, New York, New York

The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York

Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, New York

Chase Manhattan Bank, Paris, France

The Deutsche Bank, New York, New York

Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, Michigan

Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, Connecticut

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey

Musee Cantini, Marseilles, France

Musee Pompidou, Centre National de l‟Art Contemporain, Paris, France

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

Nabisco Inc. East Hanover, New Jersey

The National Museum of American Art, Washington D.C.

The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey

The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New Jersey

Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska

Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York

The United Bank of Illinois, Rockford, Illinois

Carlson Gallery, University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, Connecticut

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.

Reviews of the Paintings by John Day; Critics from The New York

Times, Herald Tribune, Le Figaro & art journals:

“In this group I found two artists who interested me… John Day, Whose work is well

enough known to make him a surprise in an exhibition with exploratory overtones, is

represented by recent work where he holds to his established level as a restrained

pleasantly non-confessional surrealist.”

John Canaday, The New York Times (October 1969)

“…an intriguing and beautifully painted show.”

Carol Cutler, International Herald Tribune (May 1969)

“…in his Erebos Series John Day reveals many secrets to us.”

Le Figaro (March, 1972)

“…lies between the actual and the completely imagined, the highly serious and the

playful relief and simple painting.”

Lillian Lonngren, Art News (February 1963)

“We can immediately say something about Day. He is morbid – delightfully morbid!

He brings something new to Surrealism which, as a movement, has had an

extraordinarily long lease on life.”

Gordon Brown, “Only the Artist Knows,” Art Magazine (March 1968)

“Day‟s fixation is with Erebos, the region of darkness lying just above hell. The

corridors he paints leading to (or quite possibly from) hell are mounted with shadowy

portraits of vaguely remembered individuals. Strangely still and as drained of life,

even while in their most characteristic poses, they endure as transfers of

themselves; these deathly quiet corridors recall Dante‟s „per me si va tra la perduta

gente‟…..The impression of ineluctability is heightened by the corridors‟ entrance

(or exit) of harsh white light and an exact, classical sense of perspective.”

Michael Peppiat, “Paris, “ Art International (Summer 1969)

“John Day…was a disciple of Josef Albers and worked in a strict geometric manner

until he spent time in Greece and France. Then, on that stark foundation, he began

to add strange temples, corridors and long perspective visions. Not content with

merely painting people in his compositions, he pasted on old, faded portrait

photographs to create haunting interior-scapes where gods conceivably walk.”

Carol Cutler, “Paris: The New Surrealists, “ Art in America (March-April 1970)

“The paintings which open on the sides (Gateway of Erebos, 1971, and Erebos-Elle,

1971) offer on the opportunity only to move in dangerous directions.”

Karl Lunde, “On to Erebos,” Art and Artists (March 1972)

“What is remarkable about the paintings of John Day is that while every object and

color is symbolic and every detail an exponent of the same internal logic, literary

explanations and hypothesizing, though relevant, cannot weaken their seductive

power. …In Day‟s paintings every proposition is sabotaged, every object and quality

is juxtaposed with is opposite…..In the multi-level „unrealities‟ John Day creates

through realist techniques, one confronts his own ambivalent attitude towards death

– and life.”

Ellen Schwartz, “Paris Letter – April,” Art International (Summer 1972)