In “Reading Gestural Abstraction,” Gabriel Ridout, PhD student in English in Arts & Sciences, discusses a pair of paintings in the Kemper Art Museum’s permanent collection. From a series that critic Thomas Hess dubbed “abstract urban landscapes,” Willem de Kooning’s Saturday Night (1956) condenses urbanity and sexuality in a turbulent froth of blues and pinks. In Amy Sillman’s Cart (2017), bold black lines lurch over and beneath diaphanous patches of red, pink, and yellow, suggesting shapes that never fully cohere. This talk puts the two gestural paintings in conversation to consider how de Kooning and Sillman approach questions of self and body in their work. Drawing from recent developments in trans studies and critical ethnic literary studies, Ridout asks, who has the luxury to abstract? Who has the right to express or not express? What might abstract gestural painting make possible for multiply marginalized subjects?

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