John Perreault

Throughout his illustrious career, John Perreault was always an explorer. As a poet, artist, performer, curator, museum director, composer, teacher, and most notably as an art critic, he never shied away from anything in the art world. He always seemed to push the boundaries, and his practice as a painter and sculptor was no exception.

SELECTED WORK

Perreault knew his art history inside and out and was able to distill all that he had observed into conceptually vibrant works. His output knew no bounds and he ventured into a plethora of untraditional media and styles.

He broke rocks and mended them back together; he re-purposed thrift store artworks and painted on top of them; he taped, wrapped, and stacked store-bought canvases still in their cellophane wrappers; he bound two wheelbarrows with a fishing line; he used sand, toothpaste, instant coffee grounds; and painted/performed drip paintings, unlike any others. And all of these innovative explorations fostered profound insight into visual phenomena with often hilarious connotations.

Perreault told Art Experience NYC in 2011 that “making artworks is more like philosophical investigations, art criticism or yoga.”

Born in Manhattan, John Perreault (1937-2015) first showed his paintings at Greenwich Village’s One Eleven Gallery in the mid-1960s. Perreault simultaneously broke ground in the fields of Conceptual and Performance Art, appearing at the Whitney Museum and elsewhere. Perreault has had work exhibited nationally and internationally.

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