With his sleek, totemic sculptures made from industrial materials, John McCracken contributed a distinctly West Coast voice to the Minimalist movement. Inspired by the work of Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, and Donald Judd, he made monochromatic “planks”—narrow, wooden, rectangular forms that the artist coated in resin and polished to a high-shine, reaching his desired “finish fetish” look. McCracken would lean these pieces against gallery walls, blurring the line between painting and sculpture, and complicating the gap between viewer and object. The artist studied painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts and embraced both Abstract Expressionism and Pop art before reaching his signature style. McCracken exhibited widely in his lifetime. He participated in the 1986 Venice Biennale and the 2007 edition of Documenta. On the secondary market, McCracken’s work has achieved high six-figure prices, and his pieces can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the S.M.A.K. Museum of Contemporary Art, among many other institutions.
