Joe Zucker: 1000 Brushstrokes

Joe Zucker (1941 - 2024) is one of the most innovative, and idiosyncratic, figures in contemporary American art. His work, produced across mediums and genres, deals with themes such as material, process, and the very nature of how paintings are made. His Brushstrokes, industrial mops soaked in myriad colors of Benjamin Moore house paint, encapsulate these interests.

In total, Zucker produced 1,000 Brushstrokes designed to hang in 250 squared modules. “I have performed it,” Zucker said, “but not seen the final whole.” The final whole, should it ever be displayed, would measure 9,000 square feet. Here, the Pollock-Krasner House presents a selection of Zucker’s Brushstrokes along with preparatory maquettes for the modules.

In part, Zucker’s Brushstrokes represent a celebration of process. Each module becomes a kind of canvas, the frames of which are composed of the brushes themselves. Each brush is laden with paint, frozen in a moment of kinetic potential, ready to transfer physical material, and the artist’s unique vision, onto the canvas. In this way,  the modules represent a collapsing of the whole artistic timeline into a simultaneity: process and product, tool and labor, object and idea become one.

About the Artist

Joe Zucker was born in 1941 in Chicago, IL. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1966. After several years spent working in Manhattan, Zucker moved to the East End of Long Island in the 1980s, where he lived and worked until his death in 2024. His work has been exhibited the world over and is held in such collections as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Parrish Art Museum.