Rob Pruitt (born 1963/1964) is an American post-conceptual artist. Working primarily in painting, installation, and sculpture, he does not have a single style or medium. He considers his work to be intensely personal and biographical.
Pruitt has exhibited extensively in New York and internationally; in 2013 the Aspen Art Museum held his mid-career retrospective.
Early life and education
Pruitt grew up in Rockville, Maryland. He attended Corcoran College of Art and Design, where he became friendly with the admissions director, Tim Gunn. Pruitt transferred to Parsons School of Design when Gunn began teaching there. During college, Pruitt lived at the Chelsea Hotel and says he focused his energy on partying rather than studying.
Artwork
Early work
Pruitt began exhibiting in the early 1990s with his then collaborator, Jack Early. After a controversial exhibition, Red, Black, Green, Red, White and Blue, at Leo Castelli Gallery their partnership disintegrated and neither had major shows for several years.
While galleries refused to represent his solo work, Pruitt contributed to a few group shows. Pieces from this time dealt with his exclusion from the art world; his first sculpture at Gavin Brown's enterprise was an Evian fountain, which, as Mia Fineman points out, is related to baptism and rebirth.
In 1998 Pruitt caused another minor scandal with a piece called Cocaine Buffet which was shown at The Fifth International, Chivas Clem's artists run space. The show was co-curated by Jennifer Bornstein. He installed a 16-foot mirror with a line of real cocaine running down the center, in which visitors were welcome to partake. Publicity stunt, peace offering, minimalist sculpture, or indictment of the greed and glamour of the art world, it changed the sensation associated with his name.
101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself
The following year Pruitt held his first solo show, “101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself,” where he applied humor to the genre of language-based conceptual art. The recipe-style book was filled with instructions for making and decorating such as “Paint secret paintings on walls with glow in the dark paint” and “Draw yourself into your favorite comic strip.” Others were suggestions on how to interact with the world in a different way, like “Sit on the toilet backwards” and “Go on an animal photo safari in a city: dogs, cats, pigeons, rats, and squirrels.”
The exhibition was thirty-five of these instructions realized, including an exercise bike facing a painting and a pile of pennies on the floor. During the time he was barred from the art world, Pruitt briefly worked for Martha Stewart Living, coming up with DIY craft ideas; a DIY sensibility runs throughout his work.
Pandas
In 2001 Pruitt showed the first of the glittery panda paintings that would become his trademark. He explains his choice of subject matter thus: “I see it as a kind of corporate damage control -- like trying to market Perrier after they found benzene in it, or Firestone tires after they exploded. I was a reviled figure, but everybody loves a panda.” He remembers childhood visits to the giant pandas at the National Zoo. Pruitt has made many versions his panda painting using different techniques and stylizations of the same subject matter.
Critic Michelle Grabner analyzes the panda project thus: “The paintings' clichéd imagery neutralizes their real endangered status making us less culpable in the creatures' pending extinction. And therein lies the beauty of the clichéd image." She goes on, "This appropriation of similes, once strictly the providence of kitsch, has nothing to do with blurring the distinctions between high and low. Instead, rainbows and butterflies have come to symbolize a magical new world where order is without hierarchies, edification is without snobbishness[…]Pruitt produces his art without the slightest glance of irony. He makes glamorous and admirable our drive for worldly success while commiserating with our search for inner virtue.” Although the paintings are designed and tightly crafted, they are imperfect; the artist's hand is evident. His use of glitter has been compared to Andy Warhol's diamond dust, but Pruitt describes his own work as “basically blown up versions of dining table craft projects... I’ve really enjoyed letting the world know that not everything is so mystified or so regulated to expertise—that you can make something really beautiful with a little ingenuity and some supplies from Michael’s.”
Pruitt collaborated with Jimmy Choo in 2012 to create a line of shoes and handbags featuring panda bears and animal prints.