At Parrish Art Museum, Tony Bechara's 60-Year Career Gets Its First Full Count
“Tony Bechara: An Artist of Many Worlds” opened a few weeks ago at the Parrish Art Museum in
Bechara gave the Parish 19 Red (2015) shortly before his death last April. How did that gift come about?
Tony had already participated in the Parrish's 2023 exhibition to celebrate our 125th anniversary, where we invited artists with deep ties to the East End, artists like Tony, who spent most of his summer in the Hamptons, to select works from the museum's collection and put them in conversation with them.
Tony really enjoyed researching our collection and spending time in the basement. In our conversation, I casually remarked that it was a shame he wasn't represented in the Parrish's permanent collection and suggested that he consider giving us a painting so that his work and the artists who have shaped this region could be forever represented. Because those artists included William Merritt Chase, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Malcolm Morley and many other artists they loved, he was tempted!
Tony loved the Parrish and was genuinely happy with the direction of the museum during my time, so he had many reasons to make such a gift. He invited me to his studio to choose a painting, and I chose a large, bright, bright and shiny work that immediately appealed to me. In fact, I had it hanging in my office for a while before I “borrowed” it from the show.
He noted that it often “doesn't help if the director chooses,” but he co-organized the survey with Kaitlin Halloran. What made you want to take it straight?
When museum directors select exhibitions, it can sometimes overshadow the outstanding work of museum curators. I'm definitely guilty of that myself.
However, in this case, Tony was a dear friend, role model and mentor. His death shocked him deeply. Much of my success at Parrish is due to his unwavering encouragement, sound advice and willingness to listen. For that reason, I felt that I should participate in organizing his exhibition.
I invited my colleague, Associate Curator Kaitlin Halloran, to serve as co-curator. Kaitlin is a rising star, and she brought incredible scholarly rigor, meticulous research and curatorial expertise to this project. I brought my heart; he brought a scholarship. Together, it was a perfect combination.
This is billed as the first comprehensive survey of Bechara's 60-year career, although his work sits at the Met and the Brooklyn Museum and he curated El Museo del Barrio for 18 years. Why did it fall to Parish to conduct his first major survey?
There have been other surveys of Tony's work, but this is the first overview covering the full arc of his artistic career. It includes some of his early paintings, such as The blind the 1970 series, created shortly after his studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and extends to works made in the last year of his life in 2025.
The exhibition traces Tony's evolution as an artist, following his journey from illustration to abstraction and revealing the moment he discovered a different visual language and artistic vocabulary to describe his extraordinary work.
Your training is in architecture, and Bechara built his paintings on an orthogonal grid taken from the sculptures of Ravenna and the tile work of the Alhambra. How did that background influence your study of his method?
Interestingly, once Tony developed his method, using an orthogonal grid of ¼-inch by ¼-inch squares as the basis for all his compositions in the early and mid-1970s, he spent his entire career exploring the endless possibilities contained in that seemingly rigid structure.
He has experimented with an extraordinary range of permutations and variations: from compositions that seem to include a random distribution of color across the canvas, to works that include visible patterns, to patterns that are so scattered that they also seem almost unexpected. He also created pixelated, psychedelic swirls and funky monochromes combined with a multitude of colors and tonal variations, giving the scene a shimmering, almost vibrating quality.
The ability to generate an infinite number of compositions from a limited set of parameters is something Tony's work shares with architecture, as you say. It's often forced into a “restricted rationality,” as Tony calls it, where boundaries and a defined set of rules pressure artists and architects to be their most creative, creative and creative selves.
The press release states that Bechara's translation creates a “discussion with the Declaration of Independence's assertion of the 'pursuit of happiness,'” noting that it is “the language of self-determination and integration.” How does supervisory work fit into these prosaic ideas?
Through his use of the grid, Tony discovered a strategy where a seemingly rigid structure, which gives order to chaos, can simultaneously allow difference, variety and randomness to flourish. I find Tony's composition to be a powerful metaphor for this year. His grid creates a sense of order, or “union,” while serving as a base from which separate and distinct colors (or individuals) can emerge, interact and shine. Each element maintains its own identity while contributing to a cohesive, harmonious and ultimately inspiring whole.
In his paintings and colorful grids, Tony achieved a deeply personal form of self-expression while embracing the vast cultural influences gathered throughout his world travels. His work combines the strategy of coexistence of the past and the present and compositions of presentations where many different elements can come together, retain their individuality and still function as a unified and unified entity. To me, that is ultimately one of the greatest achievements and ambitions of the United States: to create a framework in which many voices, cultures and ideas can exist at the same time and make a great, holistic contribution.
Parrish specializes in artists from the East End, and the graffiti marks Bechara's long stay in the Hamptons. What was his connection to this region? What did the Hamptons give him?
East End Summer is renowned for bringing together the most influential thought leaders in the arts, culture and financial worlds. This unique combination of creative and intellectual energy has made the community an incredibly desirable place to be a part of. Tony not only participated in these gatherings; he was among many of these gatherings.
Summers in the East End provided Tony with the perfect setting to host his weekly dinners, reminiscent of the salon gatherings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when artists, writers, intellectuals and cultural figures gathered together to exchange ideas. Historically, many artistic movements and intellectual currents have been nurtured through these conversations, and Tony understood the power of bringing people together around the table. His dinners became modern salons, gatherings where friendships were formed, ideas were shared and the creative community was continuously renewed.
Whatever the Hamptons gave Tony, he returned tenfold through his generosity, his friendship, his hospitality and his unwavering commitment to the arts and bringing people together. Tony wasn't just part of the Hamptons; he was one of the people who helped make the Hamptons the vibrant cultural community it is today.
Bechara has been mapping his “pixels” by hand since the early 1970s, long before digital interpretation existed. How do you present that analog, manual practice as an invention to be admired, when your current audience reads the entire grid as a screen?
It's interesting because visitors don't see these works as simple pixels or digital grids. Tony's paintings are deceptively complex: they appear to be one thing when viewed from a distance (or on a digital screen) and reveal themselves as something completely different when up close and personal. In my opinion, there is also a sense of humor embedded in their elements of surprise and unpredictability that is often absent in our digital culture.
When approached closely, the paintings transform into a tactile, auditory and sensual experience. Compressive marking, where one can feel the texture and presence of each small square, shows an incredible dedication of time, discipline and close work. Combined with the visual manipulation of these countless creative touches, this meticulous process results in an emotional experience for the viewer.
Ultimately, digital pixels and screens cannot create the “emotional fields or temperatures” that Tony was exploring. Besides the visual experience of each individual work, visitors are able to grasp a larger view of the artist and his personal journey, which is what makes this exhibition so powerful. This is what we saw in the responses of our visitors: a sincere emotional connection not only to the work itself, but also to the creative process and the journey of the artist's life.
By presenting the full body of Tony's artistic journey, works, process and the life behind it, we are able to reframe the exhibition experience for today's indigenous audience. We remind visitors that art is not just a picture to look at, but an encounter: the relationship with material things, human creativity and the unique story embedded in every work.
There is nothing in the world that compares to the experience of standing in front of a large painting – the possibilities of transcendence can arise through these photo galleries, such as those created by Tony throughout his extraordinary career.
More discussions
