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Jo Baer

Untitled (Pale Blue), 1964-65

When Jo Baer returned to New York after a stint in Los Angeles in 1960, it was at the cusp of a decade deﬁned by rigorous intellectual and artistic innovation.

While her male peers loosely comprising the Minimalist group—Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt—would reconcile the terms of art and “objecthood” through sculpture, Baer, by contrast, vigilantly explored painting’s continued viability as a radical form of expression throughout the 1960s and into the mid-70s.

studio shot in skirt.png — Jo Baer, 1965, Fischbach Gallery, photography by Walter Rosenblum, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Untitled (Pale Blue) by Jo Baer — Jo Baer, Untitled (Pale Blue) (detail), 1964-65, oil on canvas, 48" × 48" (121.9 cm × 121.9 cm) © Jo Baer

Refusing painting’s association with illusionism, Baer’s approach—which was largely motivated by her academic background in biology and behavioral psychology—reflects a fascination with the mechanics of retinal visuality, Gestalt theory, and optical phenomena.

Untitled (Pale Blue) by Jo Baer — Jo Baer, Untitled (Pale Blue), 1964/65, oil on canvas, 48" × 48" (121.9 cm × 121.9 cm)

Untitled (Pale Blue) (1964–65) belongs to Baer’s emblematic Single Paintings series executed over the course of two years and comprising an original group of twelve works. Working within a systematic, rule-based approach, Baer’s Single Paintings feature a black border with a single strip of color running along its interior sides.

Untitled (Pale Blue) by Jo Baer — Jo Baer, Untitled (Pale Blue) (detail), 1964-65, oil on canvas, 48" × 48" (121.9 cm × 121.9 cm) © Jo Baer

They are conceived in one of four colors (red, blue, yellow, green); formats (horizontal rectangle, vertical rectangle, large square, small square); and properties (intense, pale, bright, gray). Baer noted each permutation in the below color sketch where Untitled (Pale Blue) is represented at the center.

color strip singles.jpg

"[Baer’s] use of color is so crucial to the meditative ambience invoked, bringing the work closer to Reinhardt than to say, Newman... The initial purity of her work will undoubtedly lead to Baer’s classiﬁcation with such absolutists as Judd although the mood is more Romantic than factual.”

Lucy Lippard

study 62-64 for web.jpg — Jo Baer, Untitled, 1964, oil on paper. Color studies for the Single Paintings series.

study 1962-64 for web.jpg — Jo Baer, Untitled, 1964, oil on paper. Color studies for the Single Paintings series.

"A painting is an object which has an emphatic frontal surface. On such a surface, I paint a black band which does not recede, a color band which does not obtrude, a white square or rectangle which does not move back or forth, to or from, or up or down... Every part is painted and continuous to its neighbor; no part is above or below any other part. There is no hierarchy. There is no ambiguity. There is no illusion. There is no space or interval (time)."

Jo Baer, Letter to Robert Morris, 1967

Weiner photo (Kirsten).png

There are over nine variants from the Single Paintings series in museum collections including The Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Seattle Art Museum.

Jo Baer, 2020 © Yaël Temminck

To learn more about this work or inquire about available works by Jo Baer, please email inquiries@pacegallery.com.

Past, Jo Baer, Untitled (Pale Blue), Dec 9, 2020