Plimack Mangold’s practice emphasizes the Minimalist tenet of repetition and employs Conceptualism’s devices of marking and measuring, while remaining grounded in realist painting. Her choice of subject—domestic spaces such as floors, sometimes bare, sometimes with mirrors or piles of laundry—offers a personal counternarrative to the objective form of the grid, the dominant aesthetic concern of the time. In Exact and Diminishing she investigates a linoleum floor using studio tools. Two aluminum Exact brand rulers mark the space: one records the "exact" height of the canvas, while the other, rendered using one-point perspective, measures the same distance on the floor. The title plays with the deadpan characteristics of Conceptualism and also calls attention to the artifice of realist painting.
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the artist, Washingtonville, N. Y. (1976–at least 1982; probably on consignment ca. 1978 to Droll/Kolbert Gallery, New York); [Brooke Alexander, New York, in 1994]; [Alexander and Bonin, New York, 1995; sold in November 1995 to private collection]; private collection, Texas (1995–2000; sale, Sotheby's, New York, May 18, 2000, no. 295, sold to Alexander and Bonin); [Alexander and Bonin, New York, 2000–2012; sold to MMA]
New York. Fischbach Gallery. "Sylvia Plimack Mangold," February 24–March 13, 1976, no catalogue.
Madison, Wis. Madison Art Center. "Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Paintings 1965–1982," December 11, 1982–February 13, 1983, no. 21 (lent by the artist).
Grand Rapids, Mich. The Grand Rapids Art Museum. "Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Paintings 1965–1982," March 6–April 17, 1983, no. 21.
Buffalo. Albright-Knox Art Gallery. "The Paintings of Sylvia Plimack Mangold," September 25–December 31, 1994, no. 11 (lent courtesy Brooke Alexander, New York).
Hartford. Wadsworth Atheneum. "The Paintings of Sylvia Plimack Mangold," January 22–April 2, 1995, no. 11.
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston. "The Paintings of Sylvia Plimack Mangold," September 9–October 22, 1995, no. 11.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "The Paintings of Sylvia Plimack Mangold," November 11, 1995–February 18, 1996, no. 11.
New York. Alexander and Bonin. "Neil Jenney, Ree Morton, Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Early Works 1965-1975," September 10–October 30, 2004, no catalogue.
New York. The Art Show, Park Avenue Armory. "Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Selected Works," March 7–11, 2012, unnumbered cat. (p. 8).
New York. Alexander and Bonin. "Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Recent Works," March 16–April 28, 2012, unnumbered cat.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Range: Experiments in New York, 1961–2007," August 18, 2017–February 25, 2018, no catalogue.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art [The Met Breuer]. "Home Is a Foreign Place: Recent Acquisitions in Context," April 9, 2019–March 12, 2020 [intended closing date June 21, 2020], no catalogue.
Thomas H. Garver. Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Paintings 1965–1982. Exh. cat., Madison Art Center. Madison, Wisc., 1982, unpaginated, no. 21, ill. (color).
Helen Molesworth. Sylvia Plimack Mangold. Exh. cat., Alexander and Bonin. New York, 2012, p. 8, ill. (color).
Cheryl Brutvan inSylvia Plimack Mangold: Landscape and Trees. Exh. cat., Norton Museum of Art. West Palm Beach, 2012, p. 16, fig. 1 (color).
Sylvia Plimack Mangold (American, born New York, 1938)
1980
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