James Little (born 1952) is an American painter and curator. He is known for his works of geometric abstraction that are often imbued with exuberant color. He has been based in New York City.
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Early life and education
Little was born in 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in the segregated American South. He is from an African-American family.
He studied at the Memphis Academy of Art (now known as Memphis College of Art). While a student his work was praised and selected in 1973 for an exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center by Gerald Nordland. He received his BFA degree from Memphis Academy of Art in 1974. In 1976, Little obtained his MFA degree from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.
Career
Little cites Joan Mitchell along with Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Alma Thomas, and George L. K. Morris as among the artists whose work he most admires. He has said of his own modus operandi: "Abstraction provided me with self-determination and free will. It was liberating. I don't find freedom in any other form. People like to have an answer before they have the experience. Abstraction doesn't offer you that." Critic Karen Wilkin has called Little's work (as possessing of a) "ravishing physicality" and . . . "orchestrations of geometry and chroma to delight our eyes and stir our emotions and intellect...". Although Little has oft been labeled a hard-edge influenced painter, he himself has said otherwise.
In 1976, his work was the subject of the solo exhibition Paintings by James Little curated by Ronald Kutcha at the Everson Museum in Syracuse. In 1980, Little's work was included in the exhibition "Afro-American Abstraction", curated by April Kingsley, at MoMA PS1.
In 2002, Little's large commission for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was unveiled. Riders at Jamaica Station now travel through his 85-foot-long environment made of 33 multicolored laminated glass panels in a prismatic design, each measuring at 17-feet tall by 5-feet wide.
In 2020, some of Little's large-scale black-tone paintings were shown in a two-artist exhibition with the work of Louise Nevelson, who was represented exclusively by the black colored sculptures, for which she is most known. The exhibition titled Louise Nevelson + James Little ran from September 3, 2020 until October 28, 2020 at Rosenbaum Contemporary in Boca Raton, Florida.
Little's work was included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial.
Little currently teaches at the Art Students League of New York. He was formerly represented by the June Kelly Gallery in Manhattan and is now represented by Petzel in New York City, Louis Stern Fine Arts in West Hollywood, and the Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago, where his work was the subject of a solo exhibition in November 2022.
His work is the subject of the 2005 paperback publication James Little: Reaching for the Sky, which features 13 color reproductions of his pieces and essays by Robert C. Morgan, George N'Namdi, Alvin Loving, Robert Costa, Horace Brockington, and James Haritas.
Awards
In 2009, Little won a Joan Mitchell Foundation award. He has also been the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.
Curation
In 2019, Little curated the New York Centric exhibition at the American Fine Arts Society gallery, which included the work of multiple generations of abstract artists associated with New York City, among them Alma Thomas, Alvin Loving, Larry Poons, Stanley Boxer, Peter Reginato, Dan Christensen, Ronnie Landfield, Gabriele Evertz, Charles Hinman, Thornton Willis, Doug Ohlson, Robert Swain, and Ed Clark.
Solo exhibitions
2021: Chromatic Rhythm - James Little: Paintings on Paper, Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee
2020: James Little: Dots and Slants, Louis Stern Fine Arts, West Hollywood, CA
2018: Slants and White Paintings, June Kelly Gallery, New York
2016: Informed by Rhythm: Recent Work by James Little, Louis Stern Fine Arts, West Hollywood, CA
2015: "Color/Barriers: Recent Work", essay by James Harithas, June Kelly Gallery, New York
2013: "Never Say Never", essay by Karen Wilkin, June Kelly Gallery, New York
2011: "Ex Pluribus Unum: New Paintings", essay by Mario Naves, June Kelly Gallery, New York
2009: "De-Classified, Recent Paintings", essay by James Harithas, June Kelly Gallery, New York
2007: James Little: Untold Stories, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, TX
2005: "Reaching for the Sky, essays by Robert Costas, James Harithas, Al Loving, G. R.;N'Namdi Gallery, New York; catalogue
2003: "Beyond Geometry: New Paintings", essay by Robert C. Morgan, L.I.C.K. Ltd. Fine Art, Long Island City, NY
1995: Recent Abstract Paintings, Kenkeleba Gallery, New York
Group exhibitions
2022: Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It's Kept, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
2021: The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia
2019: New York Centric, Art Students League of New York, New York
2019: The Shape of Abstraction: Selections from the Ollie Collection, St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
2018: Color/Line/Form, Rosenbaum Contemporary, Boca Raton, Florida
2018: The Masters: Teachers and Their Students, Art Students League of New York and Hirschl and Adler Modern, New York
2017: Celebrating 30 Years, Gallery Artists: Drawings and Photographs, June Kelly Gallery, New York
2016–2017: Circa 1970, curated by Lauren Haynes, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
2016: Beyond Borders: Bill Hutson & Friends, University Museums, Mechanical Hall Gallery, University of Delaware
2015: Decoding the Abstract Unlimited Potential, curated by James Austin Murray, Lyons WierGallery, New York
Outside the Lines: Color Across the Collections, curated by Tricia Laughlin Bloom, organized by the Newark Museum, NJ
Works on Paper: Selections from the Gallery, Louis Stern Fine Arts, West Hollywood, CA.