From the Archives: ARTnews on Jo Baer

One of the oldest participants in this year’s Whitney Biennial is Jo Baer, who, in the 1960s, developed a following for her minimalist canvases that often took the form of white monochromes bordered by a frame of black paint and a thin strip of color.

The newer Whitney Biennial works are unusual for Baer. They feature what appear to be various art-historical scenes—some characters from a Picasso painting, a thinly painted landscape—mashed together, but they are, in their own way, still true to Baer’s quest to explore a very tough question: what makes a painting? Reviewing a show of five Baer works in the May 1972 issue of ARTnews, Lucy R. Lippard pondered something similar.

Head to ARTnews to read the full review.