CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/14/2023

Rizzoli Bookstore presents Cynthia Carlson and Thomas Mellins launching 'Cynthia Carlson: Sixty Years'

Thursday, September 14 at 6 PM, Rizzoli Bookstore presents Cynthia Carlson in conversation with Thomas Mellins to launch her first comprehensive monograph, which positions her as a fascinating protagonist of the 1970s Pattern & Decoration movement who defied Minimalist orthodoxy with humorous multimedia explorations of domesticity and ornament. PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 PM. Click here to register.

This is the first comprehensive volume on Cynthia Carlson (born 1942), a key artist of the Pattern & Decoration group who responded to Minimalism’s dominance in the 1970s. The work of this group has recently been revisited and reappraised in exhibitions and by art scholarship. A Chicagoan under the influence of the Chicago Imagists, Carlson landed in New York City in 1965 and has exhibited widely (she was included in Lucy Lippard’s seminal 1971 exhibition 26 Contemporary Women Artists at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art). Her interest in the domestic—as a source of shapes and as a realm of familial experiences, chores and memories—intersects with the works of contemporaries ranging from Jennifer Bartlett to Joel Shapiro and Elizabeth Murray. Carlson's utilization of architectural motifs might align at one moment with the vernacular embraced in the buildings of Venturi & Scott Brown and, at another, with the postmodern rehabilitation of Beaux-Arts ornament. Her hand-painted "wallpaper" is considered a significant contribution and influence on contemporary installation art. Carlson’s artistic identity continues to morph: from room-size wallpaper and a life-size gingerbread house to unexpected shaped canvasses, architectural constructions and pet portraits. Whatever she creates, however eccentric, is high-spirited, genial and insightful.

ABOVE: “Triple Bulges” (1975)

Thomas Mellins is an architectural historian, author, educator, and exhibition curator. Mr. Mellins has taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, the University of Texas at Austin, and Parsons/The New School. In 1999 Mr. Mellins was designated a Centennial Historian of New York City.

Mr. Mellins is the co-author of New York Rising: An Illustrated History from the Durst Collection; Mexico Modern: Art, Commerce and Cultural Exchange; Doris Duke’s Shangri La; The American Style: Colonial Revival and the Modern Metropolis; and Only in New York: Photographs from Look Magazine. Mr. Mellins co-authored, with Robert A.M. Stern and others, three volumes in an award-wining book series on the architecture and urbanism of New York City: New York 1880, New York 1930, and New York 1960. In 1987 New York 1930 was nominated for a National Book Award. Mr. Mellins has written for the New York Times, Architectural Record, and other publications.

Mr. Mellins has curated or co-curated numerous exhibitions including “Lincoln Center: 50 Years” at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, “Gay Gatherings: Philip Johnson, David Whitney and the Modern Arts,” at The Glass House; and “Affordable New York: A Housing Legacy” at the Museum of the City of New York. Other exhibitions he has curated for the Museum of the City of New York include: “New York Fast Forward: Buildings by Enrique Norten and TEN Arquitectos,” “Neil Denari Builds on the High Line,” and “New York’s Moynihan.” Mr. Mellins co-curated “Doris Duke’s Shangri-La,” which originated at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and traveled to six cities on a national tour and he co-curated “House & Home,” a permanent exhibition at the National Building Museum. In 2011, Mr. Mellins curated “The New York Public Library: Celebrating 100 Years,” which attracted over 800,000 visitors to become the most heavily attended exhibition in the library’s history. Additionally, Mr. Mellins has organized shows for the Art Museum of the Americas, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Center for Architecture, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the New York City Ballet, the New York School of Interior Design, the South Street Seaport Museum, Trinity Church Wall Street, and Yale University.

Rizzoli Bookstore
Cynthia Carlson and Thomas Mellins on 'Cynthia Carlson: Sixty Years'
Thursday, September 14: 6 PM
1133 Broadway
New York, NY 10010