Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla

This book documents Lutes' 2009 retrospective exhibition at the Renaissance Society, which included work from 1982 to 2006. While a retrospective affords a chance to construct a narrative of an artist?s development, Lutes stylistic development hardly allows for an analysis following an evolutionary model. Figuration and abstraction coexist in constantly changing degrees. As essayist John Corbett says, "It is the central point of [Lutes] work, in fact, to tease out the productive tension from those two types of painting."

Lutes' work has been variously associated with Chicago imagism, Northwest Coast abstraction, so-called "bad" painting, and postmodern appropriation, to name a few. While none of these associations are wrong per se, to understand his work within the narrow context of any single movement would be a mistake. Lutes work is resolutely uncategorizable, an independent pursuit that acknowledges such art movements but never quite fits any given mold, which could arguably be considered the quintessential definition of a Midwestern artist.

Hamza Walker offers an introductory overview of Lutes' career to date, while Corbett's wide-ranging essay touches on connoisseurship, coffee, and cymbals in the process of refuting the false dichotomy of abstraction and figuration.

Hamza Walker became the second director of The Brick in Los Angeles after twenty-one years as curator and director of education at the Renaissance Society in Chicago. Walker was the recipient of the 1999 Norton Curatorial Grant, the 2005 Walter Hopps Award for curatorial achievement, and a 2006 Emily Hall Tremaine Award for the exhibition Black Is, Black Ain't. In 2010, Walker was awarded the Ordway Prize as a mid-career curator whose writings and exhibitions have had significant impact on the field of contemporary art. In addition to serving on panels and juries throughout Europe and the United States, he has written for numerous artists' monographs and publications such as Artforum and Parkett.