Qualities of Stillness: Paintings by Joseph Ablow

January 22 – March 20, 2016

Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery
855 Commonwealth Avenue

Qualities of Stillness: Paintings by Joseph Ablow surveys three decades of still-life painting of venerated Boston University School of Visual Arts Professor Emeritus Joseph Ablow. The artist dedicated his later studio practice to the consideration of simple and ordinary objects, often in sparsely composed table studies, imbuing his subjects with symbolic content and an unexpected complexity. His watercolors, gouache, and oil paintings not only explore and expand the conventions of still-life painting, but also illuminate the relationship between pictorial space and depicted objects.

About Joseph Ablow

Joseph Ablow has held academic positions at Amherst College, Wellesley College, Bard College, and Middlebury College, and was Professor Emeritus at Boston University. Ablow served as Associate Professor of Art in the School of Visual Arts (then called the Division of Art) from 1963 to 1975, achieving the rank of Professor in 1975, a position held until his retirement in 1995. Ablow was Chairman of the Division of Art from 1964 to 1967 also serving as the director of the Boston University Art Gallery in that period (now called the Faye G., Jo and James Stone Gallery) when the gallery was managed and curated by the fine arts faculty.

Ablow’s critical writings have been published in Bostonia magazine and his works have been exhibited nationally and internationally from the Art Institute of Chicago to Kunstsalon Wolfsberg in Zurich, Switzerland.  Ablow’s paintings can be found in numerous private and public collections, including Brandeis University, the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, the Boston Public Library, and the DeCordova Museum.