At Sea, 1979

Vitreous enamel, silkscreen, and enamel paint on steel (115 parts), oil on canvas (2 parts)
© Jennifer Bartlett; courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, and The Jennifer Bartlett 2013 Trust. Photo by Ian Reeves.

In 1968 Jennifer Bartlett began working with a new process that would become a signature of her practice: she obtained small steel plates and proceeded to cover them in white enamel, bake them, silkscreen grids onto them, and place them in geometric arrangements on a wall of her studio. Then, following the grids, she painted dots onto the plates in various colors and sizes that she had carefully determined in advance. Bartlett’s paintings of the late 1970s were central to the burgeoning New Image movement, which heralded a return to painting—specifically, figuration. In 1979, having long been inspired by the ocean, the California-born Bartlett completed the first in a series of works devoted entirely to water. At Sea, composed of 115 enameled steel plates overlaid with two oval canvases, is typically monumental in scale and would later be followed by several large-scale paintings that were combined with sculptures, extending Bartlett’s interest in multimedia installation.