This is the exhibition essay I wrote to accompany the exhibition I curated, Robert Cottingham and Duvian Montoya: A Glossary of Painting. The show was on at The Norwalk Art Space, a space that emphasizes accessibility, mentorship, and community. Given this, in terms of the tone of the text, it was important to strike the right balance of crafting a text that would reflect the sophistication of these two artists without crossing that threshold into “academic” or alienating.
The exhibition identity and support materials were all designed by Emily Larned. As always, Emily created a design that visually pushed the key curatorial concepts while also creating a sense of playfulness and something distinctly (maybe even inexplicably) modern about exhibiting realist painting in 2021.
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Painting figures has never interested Robert Cottingham.
In his 60 years as a professional painter–and a hugely prolific one, at that–Robert has covered a lot of ground in terms of what he’s painted. He’s painted movie marquees and store fronts. He’s painted freight trains. He’s painted typewriters and cameras. He’s painted places that are quintessentially American. He painted scenes so vivid they make us feel nostalgic for places we’ve never been. But no people.
He came close to painting a person, once. A stylized, side-profile of a woman on the exterior sign that hangs above a beauty parlor. The piece is called “Kitty’s Beauty Salon,” and it’s generally recognized as a playful departure from his typically graphic signage. But otherwise? He just doesn’t paint people.
Duvian Montoya, on the other hand, is no stranger to painting people. Duvian’s canvases are a full tour of all the characters in his life: his family, his friends, the staff at his favorite coffee shop. Even his landscapes of deserted streets bear the marks of human life: discarded mo-peds, decorative bunting, potted plants.
In fact, the leading image for this exhibition is emblematic of this. It is a portrait, painted by Duvian, lovingly studied and meticulously executed. The title, My Mentor, names exactly what the painting’s about: the painter Duvian has most learned from and whose mentorship has been most influential to his painting practice. The painting is a portrait of Robert Cottingham.
In 2013, Duvian began to work as Robert’s studio manager. Robert has been steadily working as a full-time painter since leaving his job at the advertising firm Young and Rubicam in the early 60’s. In that time, he has produced an impressive amount of work and achieved considerable acclaim. In 1998, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington D.C. organized a retrospective of his prints.
Since joining as his studio manager, though, Robert and Duvian’s relationship has grown into a warm friendship and mentorship. Photos of Duvian’s children are tacked onto the wall in Robert’s studio, woven into a bigger mural of children and grandchildren printed on glossy Kodak paper. Duvian is a trusted steward of Robert’s artworks (perhaps also owing to Duvian’s previous work as an art restorer and preparator). Shortly after Duvian joined as studio manager, Robert’s daughter, Kyle, left a career in San Francisco to return to the east coast and assume her current role as Studio Director. Duvian and Kyle now work together very closely running the business of the Cottingham Studio. Most of the work they do is what you’d expect in a professional artist’s studio: negotiate new exhibitions, pack and prep artworks to be shipped to art fairs like Basel (where Robert is still regularly shown) and to Paris and Los Angeles, where Robert has gallery representation. Some of the work the studio has been involved with lately, though, is more future-facing. Kyle is responsible for bringing the Cottingham studio to life on Instagram (follow them at @robertcottinghamstudio) and introducing a new generation of followers to her dad’s work.
There might have been no better mentor for Duvian than Robert. Over the eight years that Duvian has spent working in the Cottingham studio, he has grown tremendously as an artist. After observing Robert working in gouache, Duvian, too, began to experiment in gouache (a medium which Duvian now uses near-exclusively, except for on his large murals). After noticing Robert’s unexpected use of hues to form shadows, Duvian as well began to push his hallmark, Latin-influenced color palette into newer, more counterintuitive choices. It paid off.
Duvian’s more recent artworks are those of an artist who has studied what makes the great painters great, and applied it to his own practice. For A Glossary of Painting, Duvian will be exhibiting eight paintings from two, new bodies of work (the Meditation and Reaching for Connection series), all completed during his time learning from and working with Robert. The paintings retain the characteristic bold color, deeply personal content, and energetic line stroke that Duvian has come to be known for. But their smaller size and tighter sense of figurative realism signals a new era for Duvian. The work is more personal to him, and more technically accomplished. While A Glossary of Painting is a unique moment to view a sweeping survey of the work that Robert has produced throughout his career, for Duvian, the exhibition is something else: a bold announcement of his arrival as a mid-career painter.
This is what Robert Cottingham and Duvian Montoya: A Glossary of Painting is all about. Two artists in different seasons of their careers, with two very different practices, yet all the same, the connection between the two artists is undeniable. Duvian has become a trusted and warmly-regarded member of Robert’s studio. Robert’s influence on Duvian as a painter has been transformative. A Glossary of Painting spells this connection out. It shows us (rather than tells us) about the exchanges between Robert and Duvian, and, by extension, the value of proximity and mentorship to teaching in the arts.
All of Robert and Duvian’s artworks have been selected based on a shared painting vernaculars. These vernaculars are “shadow and contrast,” “color,” “pattern and crop,” and “directing focus.” The shared vernaculars determine the painting groupings, and these groupings are also the building blocks of this exhibition. They’re why you won’t see Duvian’s street scenes with Robert’s façades, and you will see Robert’s component paintings with Duvian’s Meditation series.
In addition to these groupings, you’ll also find an additional two categories of artworks on display in the exhibition. These works offer “behind-the-scenes” insights. They show us the progression from a subject to an artwork. For both Robert and Duvian, you can observe the transformation of a study in graphite, to watercolor, and then, finally, into large-scale paintings. Each stop along the way is a crucial moment of planning. Graphite helps to shape the composition and to map out the darkest and brightest spots. Watercolors refine the graphite and allow time to experiment with color schemes. Both artists have also kindly offered up their never-before-seen printing plates.
The logic behind the organization of Robert and Duvian’s paintings isn’t about matching artworks by color or content. That would be too easy. Instead, the logic of A Glossary of Painting mirrors the profundity of the relationships it exhibits, like the relationship of paint to a really toothsome paper, and the relationship of geometric forms that make two-dimensional space look like you could reach into it.
And like the relationship between two photorealist painters–one who paints people and one who does not–and the commitment they both share to the craft of painting.
