This year the Whitney Museum of Art presents a retrospective of the American artist, Paul Thek.  Seeing his wide range of work makes clear that Thek’s status as a little known artist does not befit the radicalism found in his art. The exhibition at the Whitney successfully presents the work of an artist who created many installation pieces that no longer exist in their original forms, many gone forever. The decision not to recreate these pieces in their entirety allows one to fully understand the significance of temporal art work.  Some pieces only have even a few small pictures documenting original or repeat installations and a limited number of objects from the piece.

Why feature an artist that, while American, spent years abroad, returning to the United States unable to recover the success he had achieved either in Europe or in New York prior to his departure?  A visit to the exhibition, co-organized by Elisabeth Sussman and Lynn Zelevansky, or a peak through the catalogue makes it clear that Thek’s innovative art works offer both a mirror and lens into American society.  Though he became an obscure artist, we can now return to those works and see how they connect to the past.

Thek’s rise to fame in New York began with a collection of works titled the “Technological Reliquaries,” which were inspired by his first formative trip to Europe. The shocking realism of these sculptures of muscle encased in glass offered, at the time, a counterpoint to the predominating minimalist style of the era.  His time in New York culminated with the work known as “The Tomb—Death of a Hippie,” and it became the comment on the era that never ceased.  It represented the culture of the sixties (and also its death), but Thek soon grew tired of being frequently asked to reenact the first installation; in fact, the hippie was his effigy.

Thek also painted on newspaper throughout his career.  These works often seemed sketchily  painted, but most fit into an iconographic world that Thek had developed. Today, though it may not have been his intention, the words behind the paint seem to hold the viewer’s attention on a similar level to the images. The pages range from the 1960s to the 1980s, and each offers a lens into the time when the painting was made. Behind one painting hid an article by Walter Kerr: “All Playwrights are Frustrated Critics.” Others hold articles about major news events. Suddenly what were fantastical images found themselves grounded in critical moments in history and statements about the time. Looking at these works in the present, it is enlightening to place the abstractions and insights into the insular world of one artist’s mind to a nation’s culture.

Entering the world of Paul Thek at the Whitney is an opportunity to look into not only his working process, including images of his studio and pages of his journals, but also his perceptions of the state of American society, from hippies to a background of world events.  To see more of the exhibit, or to learn more about Paul Thek, visit the Whitney or check out Paul Thek: Diver. The show will be up at the Whitney until January 9, 2011 before continuing to the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Hammer Museum.