Janet Fish (born May 18, 1938) is a contemporary American realist artist. She paints still life paintings, some of light bouncing off reflective surfaces, such as plastic wrap containing solid objects and empty or partially filled glassware.
Background and education
Janet Isobel Fish was born on (1938-05-18) May 18, 1938 in Boston, Massachusetts, and was raised in Bermuda, where her family moved when she was ten years old. She came from a very artistic family. Her father was professor of art history Peter Stuyvesant and her mother was sculptor and potter Florence Whistler Fish. Her sister, Alida, is a photographer. Her grandfather, whose studio was in Bermuda, was American Impressionist painter Clark Voorhees. Another member of her family also named Clark Voorhees was her uncle, a wood carver whose wife was a painter.
Fish knew from a young age that she wanted to pursue the visual arts. She said, "I came from a family of artists, and I always made art and knew I wanted to be an artist." Fish was talented in ceramics, and had her mother's kiln available. She initially intended to be a sculptor. As a teenager, Fish had a job helping out in the studio of sculptor Byllee Lang.
She attended Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, concentrating on sculpture and printmaking. She studied under George Cohn, Leonard Baskin, and Mervin Jules. She spent one of her summers studying at the Art Students League of New York, including a painting class led by Stephen Greene. Fish received a Bachelor of Arts from Smith in 1960. This was followed by a summer residency at The Skowhegan School of Art in Skowhegan, Maine in 1961.
She enrolled at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut, attending from 1960 to 1963. There she changed her focus from sculpture to painting. Her instructor for an introductory painting class was Alex Katz, who encouraged students to explore the shows in New York galleries. Fish got a sense of the direction of that art world. During that period, art schools tended to favor the teaching of Abstract Expressionism, and at first Fish followed along, painting in that style. She soon abandoned it, noting that "Abstract Expressionism didn't mean anything to me. It was a set of rules."
Her fellow Yale students included Chuck Close, Richard Serra, Brice Marden, Nancy Graves, Sylvia and Robert Mangold, and Rackstraw Downes. She was awarded her Bachelor of Fine Arts, and in 1963 became one of the first women to earn a Master of Fine Arts from Yale's School of Art and Architecture.
Life and work
After graduating, Fish spent a year in Philadelphia, then she took up residence in SoHo, where she and Louise Nevelson became friends.
Fish largely rejected the Abstract Expressionism endorsed by her Yale instructors, feeling "totally disconnected" from it and desiring instead the "physical presence of objects"; but some of its very general principles, such as the boldness and smooth, flowing brushstrokes, may have influenced her figurative work. Her work, although Realist, may include abstract forms.
In 1967 she enjoyed her first solo show, at Rutherford, New Jersey's Fairleigh Dickinson University. The exhibit included detailed paintings of vegetables and fruits. Her first New York exhibition followed two years after.
Fish is known for her large, bold Realist still lifes, especially the way she paints everyday items such as clear glassware partially filled with water, concentrating on the shapes of the objects and the play of light off of their surfaces.
She is interested in painting light and a concept she has on occasion called "packaging." For instance, if she paints a jar of pickles, the jar becomes "packaging," and this can translate into a searching for the light that describes the jar, and a subsequent translation into color. She created still life paintings of grocery store products packaged in cellophane. She said that the "plastic wrap catches the light and creates fascinating reflections".
Among her other favorite subjects are everyday objects, especially various kinds of clear glassware, either empty or partially filled with liquids such as water, liquor, or vinegar. Examples range from glasses, bottles, goblets, and jars to a fishbowl filled with water and a goldfish. Other subjects include teacups, flower bouquets, textiles with interesting patterns, goldfish, vegetables, and mirrored surfaces. Even though she was painting still lifes, she sometimes included human figures, such as a girl performing cartwheels or a boy with his dog splashing in the water.
Fish's work has been characterized as photorealist and has also been associated with new realism. She does not consider herself a photorealist; elements such as her composition and use of color demonstrate that her artistic point of view is that of a painter rather than a photographer.
A writer for The New York Times said that Fish's "ambitious still life painting helped resuscitate realism in the 1970's" and that her work depicting everyday objects imbued them with a "bold optical and painterly energy". Critic Vincent Katz concurs, stating that Fish's career "can be summed up as the revitalization of the still-life genre, no mean feat when one considers that still life has often been considered the lowest type of objective painting".
She has been an art instructor at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons The New School for Design (both in New York City), Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York), and the University of Chicago.
Fish had two short-lived marriages, which she claims were unsuccessful at least partly due to her high ambitions and her reluctance to be a "good conventional housewife". She resides, and paints, in her SoHo, New York City loft and her Vermont farmhouse in Middletown Springs.
Recognition
In an interview, American painter Eric Fischl spoke of his admiration for Janet Fish: "She's one of the most interesting realists of her generation. Her work is a touchstone, and tremendously influential. Anyone who deals with domestic still life has to go through her, she's very important."
Fish has been honored with various awards and fellowships, including:
- MacDowell Fellowship, 1968, 1969 and 1972
- Harris Award, Chicago Biennale, 1974
- Australia Council for Arts Grant, 1975
- Elected into the National Academy of Design, 1990
- Hubbard Museum Award, 1991
- Aspen Art Museum Woman in Arts Award, 1993
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, 1994
- Smith College Medal, 2012
Museum collections
References
Sources
External links
Some sites displaying images of Fish's work:
- DC Moore Gallery
- Leffingwell, Edward (December 2005). "Janet Fish at DC Moore". Art in America. Retrieved February 1, 2013.Â
- Katz, Vincent (March 2012). "Janet Fish: Recent Paintings". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved February 1, 2013.Â
- Church, Amanda (April 2012). "Janet Fish: DC Moore" (PDF). ARTnews. Retrieved February 1, 2013.Â
