12 Facts About Dike Blair

Dike Blair was born on 1952 and is a New York-based artist, writer and teacher.

Dike Blair studied art at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Whitney Museum independent study program, and University of Colorado, Boulder, and earned an MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1977.

Dike Blair was part of the late 1970s New York art scene, performing at CBGB and frequenting art bars like Magoo's, The Mudd Club and Barnabus Rex.

Dike Blair's work has been shown at the Whitney Museum, Secession, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and Centre Pompidou; it belongs to the collections of the Whitney, Brooklyn Museum, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.

Dike Blair received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009 and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in 2010.

In later paintings, Dike Blair turned to landscape, close-cropped flower images, views through obscured windows, and in the 2000s, to close-ups of eyes and nocturnal parking lots and snow scenes.

Dike Blair carefully manipulates elements such as electrical cords unfurling like lines across color-fields of industrial carpet, Plexiglas and plywood, lightboxes, shipping crates and lamps, seeking a balance in which objects retain their specificity yet read together as singular works.

In 2017, Dike Blair suspended his work on sculpture and took up oil painting.

Dike Blair has contributed articles and reviews to Artforum, ARTnews, Art Press, Bomb, Harpers, and Parkett, and served as contributing and associate editor for the Parisian magazine Purple, writing about design, music, technology, film, art and architecture.

Dike Blair has written the books Again: Selected Interviews and Essays and Punk.

Dike Blair taught in the painting department at Rhode Island School of Design from 1997 to 2017, as well as at Art Institute of Boston, New York University, and University of Las Vegas.

Dike Blair's work belongs to the public collections of the Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Musee Des Beaux Arts La Chaux De Fonds, MUMOK, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Portland Art Museum, and Weatherspoon Art Museum, among others.