Roland 2010

Stephen Mueller painted "Roland" with acrylic on canvas. The translucent fields of color and superimposed geometric shapes are typical of Mueller’s work. He came to prominence in New York in the 1980s, a period when painting had supposedly died. Mueller’s style is hard to categorize, but his approach to color and abstraction places him in dialogue with abstract expressionism. The question for the social historian is why this style of painting came back into vogue in the 80s. What social function did it serve? Was it part of a broader artistic turn away from the social critiques of the 1970s? Did it have something to do with the art market and the new investment value attached to painting? These are the questions that preoccupy the social historian. By looking at the journals and critical writings of the time, we can better understand the institutional and market forces that gave shape to the art of the 1980s.