Film Screening: “John Golding Painter: A Path to the Absolute” at YCBA

John Golding (1929–2012) was an abstract painter, though today he is better known as an eminent art historian, teacher, curator, and critic. This documentary presents a life and art in precarious balance, exploring through his friends, ex-students, and colleagues the turbulent evolution of his painting and the creative tensions within a divided life. His pictures move from violent Mexican-influenced figuration to large-scale, hard-edge abstraction and then to increasing painterliness, reflecting a cultural moment when the stakes in painting were never higher. They mirror, too, his search for an artistic form to express, contain, and sometimes veil a troubled nature. Shown to complement the Center’s exhibition “A Decade of Gifts and Acquisitions,” this film will be screened in the Lecture Hall. Seating is limited.