Anthony Cudahy: Spinneret

The first comprehensive monograph on this leading American contemporary figurative painterSpinneret draws inspiration from the eponymous silk-producing organ that spiders use to weave their webs. Anthony Cudahy’s figurative paintings tenderly piece together enigmatic scenes of specific objects and equivocal environments from interwoven references drawn from queer archives, art history, film, poetry, friends, and autobiography. Plate sections feature brief written reflections on Cudahy’s themes, style, and motifs from fellow artists and writers Ian Lewandowski, Paul Legault, Anna Glantz, Philemona Williamson, Lily Wong, Justin Liam O’Brien, Billy Sullivan, John Belknap, and Elizabeth Glaessner. Spinneret spans the last half-decade of Cudahy’s career to date, including brand new work, and unpacks his richly layered artistic practice. Organized by five artistic themes – slippages, allegories, fragments, figures, spaces – it captures the ongoing push and pull, conceptually and materially, across the artist’s practice.
The first comprehensive monograph on the contemporary figurative painter, published as a companion to the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United StatesSpinneret draws inspiration from the eponymous silk-producing organ that spiders use to weave their webs. Anthony Cudahy’s figurative paintings tenderly piece together enigmatic scenes of specific objects and equivocal environments from interwoven references drawn from queer archives, art history, film, poetry, friends, and autobiography.Coinciding with Cudahy’s solo exhibit at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, this monograph spans the last half-decade of his career, including brand new work, and unpacks his richly layered artistic practice. Organized by five artistic themes – allegories, figures, spaces, slippages, and fragments – Spinneret captures the ongoing push and pull, conceptually and materially, across the artist’s practice.