Burt BarrFollow This Artist
Born: 1938
Hometown: New York, NY
Lives and Works: New York, NY
Education:
BA, Boston University, Boston, MA
Burt Barr Bio
About The Artist
Claiming that "black and white are the only two colors I'll ever need," Burt Barr is a believer in the single take and the static shot. Meant to be projected directly onto a wall and looped for continual viewing, his films equate more to hanging drawings or black and white photographs than they are moving pictures. Observing the mundane aspects of the world with a sense of humor—he once made a video of paint drying on a wall, in real time—his works are characterized by their slow fade-ins and fade-outs. They play on the absurdity of contemporary life's rapid pace, and beg us to slow down, to take a breather in the midst of our frenetic days.
Burt Barr has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. He has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul, Turkey; and MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY. Other installations have taken place at The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; and the USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL.
Barr is the recipient of numerous awards, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, The American Film Institute, The Andrea Frank Foundation, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Art, and The Massachusetts Council on the Arts & Humanities. In Summer 2008, he was a visiting artist at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He is currently working on separate sets for the choreographers Trisha Brown and Jodi Melnick, as well as a 40-foot-long print for Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida in Tampa Bay.
Burt Barr Interview
Artist Q&A
1. Who are your favorite artists?
Trisha Brown and Richard Serra.
2. What would you want your last meal on earth to be?
Hamburger deluxe with a coke.
3. If not yourself, who would you want to be?
Marlon Brando.
4. What books are on your bedside table?
Life by Keith Richards and Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan.
5. The world would be a better place if…
There were no religions.
Burt Barr Gallery Art
Galleries
Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York, NY
Galeria Oliva Arauna, Madrid, Spain
Burt Barr Permanent Collections
Select Permanent Collections
MUDAM - Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg
Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, FL
University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL
Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Burt Barr Art
Works by the Artist
