About
Robert Cottingham is known for his paintings and prints of urban American landscapes, particularly building facades, neon signs, movie marquees, and shop fronts.
After serving in the U.S. Army from 1955 through 1958, he studied advertising and graphic design at Pratt Institute in New York from 1959 to 1963. Soon after graduating, he was employed as an art director at New York and Los Angeles advertising agencies, where he was involved with all aspects of design and production. Eager to advance his career as an artist, Cottingham eventually began to paint every day after work.
Cottingham’s interest in the intersections of art and commerce derive from his career as an adman and the influence of Pop art. Many of his paintings convey an interest in typography and lettering, as well as an awareness of the psychological impact of certain isolated words and letters. In his facades, techniques from advertising, namely cropping and enlarging, often produce words of enigmatic or comical resonance such as “Art,” “Ha,” or “Oh.” Cottingham’s enlarged sense of scale is reminiscent of James Rosenquist’s work, while his interest in text suggests the influence of Robert Indiana and Jasper Johns. In general, Cottingham viewed his work as continuing the legacy of Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, who also had a background in advertising. In 1964, Cottingham relocated to Los Angeles for work. There, inspired by the drastically different environment of the West Coast metropolis, he began to commit seriously to painting. Robert ended his advertising career in 1968, in order to devote all his time to painting.
His primary interest lies in the subject matter—the urban American vernacular—rather than the deployment of a photo-based technique. After spending a period of time in London from 1972 to 1976, Cottingham found the city’s signs and history too foreign and removed from his own interests, and returned to the United States to settle in rural Connecticut. During the late 1970s and 1980s, his urban cityscapes became more expansive, with more complex and broader views of storefronts, vistas, and entire neighborhoods. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cottingham expanded his iconography of American vernacular culture to include trains and railroad imagery. More recently, he has focused on images of vintage typewriters, a subject that first interested him in the late 1990s.
Cottingham taught at the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles and the National Academy of Design, New York. His work has been included in significant group exhibitions, including Documenta, Kassel, West Germany, the Centre national d’art contemporain, Paris, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Samsung Museum of Modern Art, Seoul and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. Cottingham’s printed oeuvre was celebrated by a solo presentation at National Museum of American Art in 1998–99. The artist lives and works on a farm in western Connecticut.
After serving in the U.S. Army from 1955 through 1958, he studied advertising and graphic design at Pratt Institute in New York from 1959 to 1963. Soon after graduating, he was employed as an art director at New York and Los Angeles advertising agencies, where he was involved with all aspects of design and production. Eager to advance his career as an artist, Cottingham eventually began to paint every day after work.
Cottingham’s interest in the intersections of art and commerce derive from his career as an adman and the influence of Pop art. Many of his paintings convey an interest in typography and lettering, as well as an awareness of the psychological impact of certain isolated words and letters. In his facades, techniques from advertising, namely cropping and enlarging, often produce words of enigmatic or comical resonance such as “Art,” “Ha,” or “Oh.” Cottingham’s enlarged sense of scale is reminiscent of James Rosenquist’s work, while his interest in text suggests the influence of Robert Indiana and Jasper Johns. In general, Cottingham viewed his work as continuing the legacy of Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, who also had a background in advertising. In 1964, Cottingham relocated to Los Angeles for work. There, inspired by the drastically different environment of the West Coast metropolis, he began to commit seriously to painting. Robert ended his advertising career in 1968, in order to devote all his time to painting.
His primary interest lies in the subject matter—the urban American vernacular—rather than the deployment of a photo-based technique. After spending a period of time in London from 1972 to 1976, Cottingham found the city’s signs and history too foreign and removed from his own interests, and returned to the United States to settle in rural Connecticut. During the late 1970s and 1980s, his urban cityscapes became more expansive, with more complex and broader views of storefronts, vistas, and entire neighborhoods. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cottingham expanded his iconography of American vernacular culture to include trains and railroad imagery. More recently, he has focused on images of vintage typewriters, a subject that first interested him in the late 1990s.
Cottingham taught at the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles and the National Academy of Design, New York. His work has been included in significant group exhibitions, including Documenta, Kassel, West Germany, the Centre national d’art contemporain, Paris, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Samsung Museum of Modern Art, Seoul and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. Cottingham’s printed oeuvre was celebrated by a solo presentation at National Museum of American Art in 1998–99. The artist lives and works on a farm in western Connecticut.
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