Christy Rupp

Christy Rupp (born 1949) is an American artist and activist. She lives and works in New York City and the Hudson Valley in New York. Animal behavior inspires her work. She is one of a group of early eco-artists concerned with urban ecology and human's perceptions of nature.

Early career

As a resident of lower Manhattan in the late 1970s, Rupp exhibited in early artist-run spaces including Exit Art, 3 Mercer Street Store (a precursor to Fashion Moda,[1] Franklin Furnace, the Kitchen, Artists Space, The Clocktower and PS1 International Studio Program, and ABC No Rio.[2] As a member of Collaborative Projects, she also participated in the illegal occupation of an abandoned city-owned building for the groundbreaking The Real Estate Show and also The Times Square Show. She also participated in the explosion of late-1970s artist generated activity which included Group Material,[3] Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America,[4] (a nationwide mobilization of writers, artists, activists, artists organizations, and solidarity groups that began in New York in 1983), P.A.D.D.( Political Artists Documentation and Distribution), Artmakers, Ventana ( a collective of artists in Support of the Artists threatened by US aggression in the Contra wars of the 1980s in Central America). Her work appeared in early publications of The Soho News, East Village Eye, Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics,[5][6][7] World War 3 Illustrated,[8] and Bomb Magazine.

The first publicly visible work was "The Rat Patrol," which was an outdoor postor project of a life-size rat pasted where garbage accumulated, pointing out the fact the city is a living ecosystem with a delicate balance. Art critic Douglas Crimp reflected on this work by writing, "Surely a photograph of a rat borrowed from Health Department files and mechanically reproduced is not a creation of artistic imagination; it has no claim to universality; it would be unthinkable to see the picture on exhibition in a museum."[9]

Mid-career and recent work
2000 Watershed Glassware

In the mid-1980s, Rupp turned her attention to global ecological struggles, such as agribusiness and water contamination. One example being the Watershed Glassware, a set of glasses for drinking tap water, featuring printed images of "perfectly harmless" organisms like Giardia, Cryptosporidium, and Fluoride. She began to make public art works including Social Progress, a commission for the Public Art Fund. Recent works include sculptures of fake ivory and its association with commercial arms trade and oil extraction. In a statement, the artist explains that her work is less about animals than it is concerned with our attitudes towards habitat. Other recent works include the series "Extinct Birds Previously Consumed by Humans (From the Brink of Extinction to the Supermarket)," that was shown at the Museum of Art and Design's exhibition, Dead or Alive.[10]

Awards and honors
  • Creating a Living Legacy, Joan Mitchell Foundation 2015
  • Anonymous Was A Woman Foundation 2010
  • National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships 1984, 1986
  • New York Foundation for the Arts 1986
  • Art Matters Inc 1986, 1988

Catalogues
  • "ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery," Alan Moore and Marc Miller, ABC No Rio with Collaborative Projects, 1985
  • "Committed to print : social and political themes in recent American printed art," Deborah Wye, The Museum of Modern Art, 1988
  • “Artworks: Christy Rupp,” Williams College Museum of Art, 1991
  • "The Artist Project Portraits of the Real Art World C: New York Artists 1981-1990," Peter Bellamy, IN Publishing, 1991
  • “Natural Selection- The work of Christy Rupp,” Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY, essay Lucy Lippard, 1992
  • "Signs Of Life: Kiki Smith, Rebecca Howland, Cara Perlman & Christy Rupp," University Galleries of Illinois State University, March 2, 1993
  • “Christy Rupp, The Landscape Within," Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, Niagara Falls, NY, 1999
  • "Urban Mythologies: The Bronx Represented Since 1960's," Lydia Yee, The Bronx Museum, August 1999
  • “Christy Rupp: Swimming in the Gene Pool,” MASS MoCA Kidspace, North Adams, MA, 2000
  • "Welded Sculpture of the Twentieth Century," Judy Collischan, Hudson Hills; 1st edition, May 2, 2000
  • "Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution," Marvin Heiferman and Carole Kismaric, Tang, 2001
  • "Alternative Art, New York, 1965-1985: A Cultural Politics Book for the Social Text Collective," Julie Ault, University of Minnesota Press, 2002
  • “Nature In Pieces: The Environmental Sculpture of Christy Rupp,” Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, 2002
  • "City Art: New York's Percent For Art Program," Eleanor Heartney, Merrell, 2005
  • "The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984," Marvin J. Taylor, Fales Library, Austin Museum of Art, Princeton University Press, 2006
  • "Espèces d’espace: The Eighties First Part,"Yves Aupetitallot, Le Magasin; CNAC, 2008
  • "The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States," National Endowment for the Arts, 2008
  • "Punk. No One Is Innocent," John Savage, Verlag fur moderne Kunst, 2008
  • "Trespass: A History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art," Carlo McCormick, Taschen, 2010
  • "This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s," Helen Molesworth, Published by MCA Chicago in association with Yale University Press, 2012
  • "American Dreamers: Reality and Imagination in Contemporary American Art," Bartholmew Bland, Franziska Nori, The Center for Contemporary Strozzina, Florence, 2012
  • "Talk About Street Art," Jerome Catz, Flammarion, 2014
  • "Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West," Lucy Lippard, The New Press, 2014
  • “Carbon Mostly,” Christy Rupp, Blurb, 2015
  • "A Book About Colab" Edited by Max Schumann, Printed Matter, 2016
  • "Exit Art: Unfinished Memories: 30 Years of Exit Art," Susan Harris (Editor), Mary Staniszewski (Editor, Foreword), Papo Colo (Preface), Holland Cotter (Foreword), Steidl, 2016

Notes
  1. "The Mercer Street Store - Art Nerd New York".
  2. http://www.abcnorio.org here-can-we-be-123-delancey-street/),
  3. "GROUP MATERIAL". Archived from the original on 2018-05-03. Retrieved 2016-11-28.
  4. "Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America". 29 February 2016.
  5. Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, #13, 1981
  6. Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, #20, 1985
  7. Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, #24, 1989
  8. World War 3 Illustrated, The Land Issue, #29, 2000
  9. Crimp, Douglas (Autumn 1984). "The Art of Exhibition*". October. 30: 53. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  10. Dead or Alive.

References
  • Archives of American Art Oral History Program An interview of Christy Rupp conducted 2012 July 16–17, by Judith Olch Richards, for the Archives of American Art http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-christy-rupp-16056
  • Times Square Show references: Martinez, Anna Blouin Art Info October 22, 2012
  • Times Square Show- Committee for the Real Estate Show. “History: The Real Estate Show Manifesto or Statement of Intent.” ABC No Rio. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 August 2009.
  • Hunter College http://www.timessquareshowrevisited.com/exhibition.html
  • Deitch, Jeffrey. “Report from Times Square.” Art in America September 1980: 58-63.
  • Ehrlich, Dimitri and Gregor Ehrlich. “Graffiti in Its Own Words.” New York 10 July 2006: n. pag. Web. 4 March 2009.
  • Eliot, Marc. Down 42nd Street: Sex, Money, Culture, and Politics at the Crossroads of the World. New York: Warner Books, 2001.
  • Goldstein, Richard. “The First Radical Art Show of the '80s.” Village Voice 16 June 1980: 1, 31-2.
  • Levin, Kim. “The Times Square Show.” Arts September 1980: 87-90.
  • Lippard, Lucy R. “Sex and Death and Shock and Schlock: A Long Review of ‘The Times Square Show’ by Anne Ominous.” Post-modern Perspectives: Issues in Contemporary Art. Ed. Howard Risatti. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990. 77-86.
  • Sedgwick, Susana. “Times Square Show.” East Village Eye Summer 1980: 21.
  • Whiting, Cécile. A Taste for Pop: Pop Art, Gender, and Consumer Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
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