Vernon Fisher - Stickchart Navigation, 1983

Vernon Fisher

Postmodernism

June 18, 2015

Vernon Fisher is an American artist working in a wide range of media, best known for his skillful combinations and juxtapositions of image and language.

Texas Child

Vernon Fisher was born in 1943 in Fort Worth, Texas. He studied English literature at the Hardin-Simmons University, where he received a BA in 1967. Vernon got his MFA in 1969, from the University of Illinois. As a true Fort Worth child, Fisher was raised and is still living in his hometown, where he enjoys appreciation as one of the Texas's most internationally recognized artists.

Vernon Fisher - Baseball Cap, 1978, multilayered, mixed media
Vernon Fisher - Baseball Cap, 1978

Vernon Fisher's Postmodernist Art

The mid-1970s was the period when Vernon Fisher started his artistic career, in the era marked by the legacies of Pop and Conceptual art. This mixture of styles created a unique fusion between painting and installation, in that way shaping new inspiring compositions derived from juxtapositions of language and imagery. Influenced by this period in contemporary art, but also by artists such as Ed Ruscha and John Baldessari, Fisher began creating his multilayered visual narratives. Resulting works – paintings, installations and collages – represent Vernon Fisher’s view on pop culture and contemporary society, enriched with art-historical and literary references. Often contextualized within a postmodernism, his works shares an influential practice of self-appraisal with Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg.

Vernon Fisher - Under the Deep, Deep Sea, 2011, multilayered, mixed media
Vernon Fisher - Under the Deep, Deep Sea, 2011

Vernon Fisher at the MoMA Collection

Vernon Fisher’s art has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows worldwide, ranging from New Delhi and China to New York. His work has been featured extensively throughout the United States, including many solo exhibitions at venues such as Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the Scottsdale Museum of Art, and the Hiram Butler Gallery, in Houston, TX. Several retrospectives of his works were held, including Vernon Fisher: K-Mart Conceptualism at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX in 2010, and most recently, Vernon Fisher: A Retrospective at the Mark Moore Gallery in Culver City, in 2015.

Vernon Fisher - You're No Good, 2015, multilayered, mixed media
Vernon Fisher - You're No Good, 2015

The art of Vernon Fisher is included in the collections of more than 40 museums across the globe, such as the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Phoenix Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The most important museum installation is in the collection of the famous Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Vernon Fisher - installation view of Projects 20 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, postmodernism
Vernon Fisher - installation view of Projects 20 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York

Fellowships and Awards

Throughout his career, Vernon Fisher has received numerous fellowships and awards. Some of them are the award from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation in 1984, the National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist's Fellowship in 1974–75, 1980–81, and 1981–82, and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995. In addition, his art has been recognized through several academic honors, including the title of Regents Professor of Art Emeritus at the University of North Texas in Denton for nearly 30 years and the Distinguished Teaching of Art Award from the College Art Association in 1992.

Vernon Fisher lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas, US.



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