House

Jennifer Bartlett

Part of the Contemporary American Graphics Collection

Jennifer Bartlett is an internationally recognized painter and printmaker. In her early work, she strictly limited herself to using grids, graphs, and dots. Her work has evolved to include an expanded view of the possibilities of classifying and cataloging. Bartlett has used the serialization of geometric forms, familiar objects that recall the ideal American homescape—a house, a tree, a white picket fence—along with literal painterly shapes—a line or a brush stroke—to create prints of incremental, seemingly endless possibilities. This print series is related to Bartlett's renowned work entitled Rhapsody that debuted at Paula Cooper Gallery in 1976. Made up of 1x1-foot enamel panels and measuring 153 feet long, Rhapsody has been said to encapsulate "a century's worth of painting." In House, 2003, Bartlett traces the progression of a central image—the house—as it grows and contracts and dissolves into a series of dots and marks. The intense primary colors and highly active patterns make this a dynamic and exciting set of images, which is reflective of Bartlett's interest in the way the mind organizes ideas and visual information.