Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art from the Permanent Collection

This exhibition, named after the now-famous lectures given by the late Kirk Varnedoe on the subject of abstract art, brought together key works in various media including painting, sculpture, photography, and prints in order to examine the evolution of abstract art in the twentieth century. While abstract art comes in many forms, it often shares a use of a particular visual language of form, color, and line to create imagery that is independent from visual references in the world.

The works in this exhibition showcased various types of abstraction that emerged during the last century including surrealism, abstract expressionism, color-field and hard-edge painting, geometric abstraction, and minimalism. Examples of these styles were represented in the work of Josef Albers, Helen Frankenthaler, Nancy Graves, Peter Halley, Grace Hartigan, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Tom Nozkowski, Aaron Siskind, Frank Stella, Mark Tobey, Anne Truitt, and Terry Winters. This exhibition was supported by the Evelyn Metzger Exhibition Fund. There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.