Jennifer Bartlett : Early Plate Work

In 1968 artist Jennifer Bartlett (b. 1941) began painting in what would become her celebrated and trademark stylecolored dots on gridded steel plates and canvas. Focusing on the single and multi-plate pieces that began in 1968 and culminated in 1976 when Bartlett sprang onto the art scene with her pivotalRhapsodypainting (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), this important book analyzes for the first time the significant role these formative and long-overlooked works played in her artistic development. Analytical and lyrical, Bartlett's early plate work reflects her transformation of the prevailing Minimalist aesthetic into something distinctly her own. With beautiful color illustrations of this body of workmany of which have never before been published or exhibitedthe book charts Bartlett's fascinating progression from mathematically precise dot paintings to rigorously structured patterned pieces to more freehand and expressive painterly pieces. In the process, the importance of these works to the artist's career and to the history of contemporary art is discovered.

Brenda Richardson, a writer and independent curator, served as deputy director of art and curator of modern painting and sculpture at the Baltimore Museum of Art from 1975 to 1998. Allison Kemmerer is Curator of Art after 1950 and of Photography at the Addison Gallery of American Art.