Christopher
Wool

Wool himself is loath to reference his early artistic influences. Whilst at Sarah Lawrence College, he had been dissuaded from pursuing painting by his tutor, the American abstract expressionist artist and alleged founder of the ‘New York School’ of painting, Richard Pousette-Dart. Pousette-Dart himself was inspired by the likes of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska; yet his influence on Wool should be limited to informing his decision to move to the all-the-more liberal and experimental New York Studio School to pursue a career in art.

Under the guidance of Tworkov and Kramer, Wool came to be influenced by the ‘godfathers’ of abstract expressionism: Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. Upon leaving, New York’s underground scene became his most important influence, however; pulsating with the sounds of punk rock, New York’s East Village quickly catalysed a thriving arts scene characterised by performance, graffiti, and mixed-media practice.

Later, in the 1980s, radical German artists Albert Oehlen and Martin Kippenberger – both famed for their emphasis on provocation and fiercely conceptual, ‘post-non-representational’ art – became major influences for Wool.

Whilst Wool is predominantly known for his painterly works, he is also a keen photographer.

As early as the late 1980s, a period in which the artist began crafting his Word Paintings, Wool began experimenting with photography, exploring how it could both inform and expand his artistic process.

Making photographs of paintings, and using photography to question his paintings’ representational and qualities reproducible, Wool’s photographic process, along with his fondness for the Polaroid, recall the photographic experimentations of much loved British artist, David Hockney.

During the 1990s and 2000s, Wool would often take photographs at night. His 2003 photobook East Broadway Breakdown evidences his imprecise, rough-and-ready approach to photography; many of its images make use of the camera’s flash function to illuminate the similarly untended urban environments of New York City’s East Broadway.