Fall 2025

Knocking on Heaven’s Door, 2025
Acrylic on Canvas
60 x 60 in

September 23rd, 2025

I’m not a believer in “political art” per se because I firmly believe that art should be used to elevate human experience rather than be used as a kind of broadside. Any special pleading that I attempt to do is oriented toward a focus on gratitude for our miraculous human experiences, and I try hard to orient myself toward a longer view. In fact, I have a solo show coming up in November that is titled “A View to the Far Horizon” and I have to say that I think that sums up my artistic practice quite well.

But having said that, we are living through a troubling time in which we have a Federal administration that appears intent on suppressing the first of the Bill of Rights and both limiting our rights to free speech and, perhaps even more troubling, inducing all of us to self-censor for fear of the consequences of offering any opinion that violates someone in power’s sensibility. From the other side of the political spectrum we have the same sensibility on many of our university campuses as professors, visiting lecturers, and students fear that they will be condemned for speaking their minds and become victims of a “cancel culture” that while thankfully not enforced by the guillotine certainly smacks of Jacobin practices. We have a group of seemingly powerful corporations and universities that have responded to threats from one source or the other by quickly suspending or firing people who have offended those who feel that differences of opinion are not to be tolerated. It would be easy to assign these horrible attitudes only to the minions of MAGA and the most radical extremes of the so-called “progressives”. But the “art community” is hardly innocent of such beliefs and practices. Is there room in the current community of artists and those who are professionally involved with it for those who don’t believe in abortion, or aren’t willing to condemn Israel for its response to October 7 (their equivalent of our 9/11 but in a more existential context than was ours), or who find the collection practices of certain museums as discriminatory as ever even if now tilted in a different direction?

The level of intolerance for people with whom we disagree has reached frightening heights. So much so that I believe the future of our Republic is at risk, perhaps to an extent not seen since the early days of the Civil War. This country has an incredible store of resilience and has endured through many periods that would have probably torn asunder another nation. But if we cannot speak our minds, and have honest disagreements that have to be worked out in one fashion or another, how can we maintain a democracy? How can we have free thinkers and the upsurge of innovation and creativity that marks a great nation that is run “of the people, by the people, and for the people”? My guess is that everyone reading this letter agrees with these sentiments. The problem is that most of us, myself included, don’t always have the discipline to hear out opinions that are quite contrary to ours and probably deserve serious consideration even if only to allow us to think through and reinforce our own beliefs and sentiments. So while I am never going to become a “political artist” (to such an extent that I have a painting in the permanent collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami that is titled I Refuse to Watch the News) I think it is just about impossible these days to avoid being a political being with an obligation to resist the forces that seek to suppress us. We are not living in Russia, or China, or Iran, or North Korea with their evil and murderous regimes and their formal restrictions on what can be expressed. We’re not living in Hungary with its leader seemingly acting as a model for our current White House resident who yearns for total control; uses the powers of his office to intimidate, bully, suppress and punish those with the temerity to have different views from his own. We’re living in the United State of America, a nation conceived by great men who when confronted by those men and women who demanded that they write a series of rights and freedoms that they had not included in the Constitution, had the good sense to recognize that the very first Amendment had to give citizens of the country the right to free speech. If we allow that right to be diminished we are surrendering a significant part of our freedom. I fondly hope that all sides of the political spectrum will step back from the brink and not only allow others free speech, but even go so far as to listen and consider those opposing voices as legitimate and worth serious consideration.

Okay, I know most of you aren’t looking for political opinions from me. I certainly don’t blame you. Who cares what an artist thinks about the world in general? Let’s move on, shall we? I do want to say something about which I think my opinion should count at least a bit. Many of you will not have heard of Jack Witten. A decade ago only his family and a small coterie of admirers of his paintings knew who he was. Five years ago he was still not widely known. Three years ago he died in his 70’s. This year, 2025, a brilliant curator at MoMA mounted a retrospective of his work. I thought it was one of the best exhibitions I have ever seen. I went three times to see it, once dragging my son and his young children with me because I thought it was that important that they see it. Look him up, though photos cannot come anywhere close to the experience of seeing the work live because he worked in layers and used a series of tools to tear away from the outer surfaces of his best work to reveal what was underneath (Anselm Kiefer has become one of the world’s most popular artists by doing this but in my opinion Witten was a superior painter). There have been a number of times I have been physically shocked by art that stood before me: seeing Matisse’s The Dancers; the first time I saw Michelangelo’s David (and even more so his Moses); seeing Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus; walking around the Scoula di San Rocco and being surrounded by Tintoretto’s Life of Christ paintings while all by myself in a place that many don’t even know is in Venice; stumbling into the Barberini in Rome while it was being refurbished and suddenly finding myself in a room with every one of their Caravaggio canvases just sitting there on easels where my wife and I could touch them if we wished while we wandered around for an hour totally undisturbed by anyone; seeing the School of Athens and the entire Raphael Room in the Vatican; the first time I encountered one of Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series; and this exhibition of Witten’s. I had two recurring thoughts: this guy was a genius; and what a damned shame that it wasn’t until just a few years after his death that he was recognized when so many artists who can’t hold a candle to him are celebrated during their lives and get the pleasure of knowing their work is admired. The art world can be a cruel place.

Speaking of which, I have done a painting that I really like called If Vincent Was Lucky. It’s a reaction to the fact that soon after I first started showing my work about two years ago I was fortunate enough to sell a number of paintings at very attractive prices and also have a few paintings acquired by museums. It made me think about how incredibly unfair it was that Van Gogh sold so little while he was alive and died having no idea he would be so lionized today. So I made a painting that takes colors from various of his paintings and created a bit of a homage to him. I wish he’d have been as lucky as I, and knew that his work was valued while he could enjoy that knowledge.

If you would like to see that piece and celebrate Vincent alongside me, please come to my solo show in New York City from November 6-November 22 on West 18th Street in Chelsea. Invitations are going out and if you are interested but didn’t get one please let us know. This show coincides with four other milestones for me. First, I was delighted that the Ogunquit Museum of American Art acquired a painting from me and plans to include it in a major show next summer. Ogunquit may be in Maine, but it is a very well-regarded museum and I’m delighted to be part of their collection. Second, I will be in a small group show in Paris during Paris Basel week in October. Third, I am going to be exhibiting at the Untitled Fair in Miami Beach during Miami Basel in early December (that’s the really “most fun” fair down at South Beach just off the sand). And last, I am really delighted that sometime in the next three months Skira Publishing (Milan) will be issuing a 200+ page monograph covering my practice and having it distributed both through their retail outlets and via many museum shops around the world. If only Vincent Van Gogh, and Jack Witten, had been as lucky as I.

As always, please feel free to write me back here. I love hearing from you.

Regards,

Abbott Stillman