Endless Limits: The Work of James Howell, 1962–2014

American artist James Howell (1935–2014) is best known for his minimalist paintings that explore the vast tonal range of the color gray. In the later decades of his life, he produced hundreds of paintings, prints, and drawings that explore the subtlety and scope of the neutral shade, as well as its relationship to light and perception of space. Titled Series 10 (1996–2014), this body of work emerged from a controlled set of parameters that Howell established, involving mathematical equations and carefully measured formulas of pigment. This calculated process resulted in paintings that gradually fade from light to dark and reflect Howell’s meditations on the unquantifiable aspects of life: spirituality and mysticism, chance happenings, and the mutability of atmospheric conditions.

This exhibition presents the first-ever career retrospective of Howell, placing his ultimate Series 10 in conversation with his earlier bodies of work to reveal his lifelong inquiry into the effects of color, light, and compositional balance. Between the 1960s and 1980s, Howell explored figuration, expressionism, and gestural abstraction through his Flag, Boxcar, Place, Port Blakely, and Points in Fields series. As he became increasingly interested in “dissolving oppositions,” his palette reduced and the defined edges of his compositions began to soften, giving way to the near-monochrome paintings of his late work. Narrowing his process opened up infinite possibilities for the artist: “You think you might be trapped by setting limits, but I found out a long time ago that everything is in everything,” Howell once expressed. “I remember having these thoughts one day looking at snow and fog. The views were simplified and the details were erased. Yet I experienced all the richness.”

Born in Kansas City, MO, Howell spent much of his early career on the west coast, where he studied literature and architecture at Stanford University. After graduating, he lived and worked off the coast of Washington state, where the range of grays he experienced in the natural environment gradually influenced his work. When he moved to New York in the early 1990s, he established a residence and studio in Greenwich Village, where he developed Series 10. Endless Limits is the first exhibition of Howell’s work on Long Island, a place that deeply impacted the artist’s later career. Between 2006 and his death, Howell worked out of his studio in Montauk, where the everchanging nature of the elements—fog, water, and light—provided fresh inspiration for his decades-long fascination with the seemingly infinite array of grays.

Endless Limits: The Work of James Howell, 1962–2014 is co-organized by Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager, and Scout Hutchinson, The FLAG Art Foundation Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Parrish Art Museum.

Exhibition Support
Endless Limits: The Work of James Howell, 1962–2014 is made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of the James Howell Foundation and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

The Parrish Art Museum’s programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and by the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.