Dinosaur No. 2

Description

A native of upstate New York, Robert Goodnough studied painting at Syracuse University in the late 1930s before he was drafted and served in the army during World War II. Goodnough settled in New York City after his service, and while studying with painter Hans Hofmann he met the sculptor Tony Smith and art critic Clement Greenberg. In 1950, Greenberg’s landmark exhibition "New Talent" at the Kootz Gallery introduced Goodnough, Grace Hartigan, Larry Rivers, and other young artists of their generation to a wider audience. Goodnough and his contemporaries paved the way for the second generation of the New York School and their work was a reflection of the abstract, gestural work of the first generation incorporated into a linear and more painterly style. With a strong Cubist influence, figures, objects, and images were deconstructed and reconfigured into abstracted yet recognizable compositions. Goodnough painted, sculpted and made numerous prints, though it is the medium of collage for which he is best known. His collages are energetic compositions of overlapping planes worked from the center out, completely abstract yet never losing the suggestion of form.
In Dinosaur No. 2 we see an example of the artist’s Dinosaur series. Following a visit to New York’s American Museum of Natural History, Goodnough was intrigued by the reconstructed brontosaurus on display. The image of the gigantic skeleton inspired his interest in the species and he read widely on their evolution and demise—a theme he would return to in both collage and sculpture. In this composition of 1960 composed of cut and torn pieces of colored paper, we see no overt representation of the dinosaur yet in the artist’s layered and scattered placement of the paper, and dark, earthy palette, there is a suggestion of the animal’s prehistoric remains.
Katie Weiss, Research Assistant, on the occasion of the exhibition The New York School: Abstract Expressionism and Beyond and Beyond, July 20, 2002 – January 19, 2003