James Bishop

Abstract painting in the 1970s was complicated. For some artists, to continue painting during the time of Pop, post-Minimalism, Conceptual art, Earthworks, installation, and institutional critique was to be academic, uptight, dead. For others, such as James Bishop, it could be a bridge. “To Continue Painting,” a mini survey of Bishop’s irreducible practice curated by Molly Warnock at Timothy Taylor, included eight paintings on canvas and eleven works on paper spanning 1960 to 1987. Some pieces appeared to be iterative near-monochromes—but were by no means Minimalist. Others contained thinly applied, yet seemingly dense fields of hue—but were not traditional Color Field paintings. And still others were seemingly referential to the support and structure of the canvas—yet were not self-reflexive. All were mysteriously evocative and incredibly difficult to categorize, as the best paintings are.