Roy Lichtenstein - Drowning Girl

1963
MoMa - New York

171.6 x 169.5 cm
Oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas

(click to enlarge)

Reduction leaves a lot of space for distinctive interpretations, being them illustrative or contextual, few have achieved such hypothetical stimulus like Lichtenstein. The enigmas are like orphan frames just cropped out of a comic book, quite intriguing when you can't read the rest of the episode, loads of questions pops up: "How did she get into this?", "Is she sad, afraid, angry or just proud towards Brad?" or yet "Who the hell is Brad?"



Misrepresentation and distortion were rather hip in the sixties, the origin of "The drowning girl" traces back to the episode "Run for Love!" from DC Comics (click to enlarge). Lichtenstein's re-creation are big coloured surfaces, a mix of the threatening wave of Hokusai with Stan Lee's comic facial pattern, a text element is added in a melodramatic close up, all painted manually and even though, simulating the benday dots of mechanical imagery press.

It could be a catch on sexism, also feverish at the time, analysing the pop era however, the high industrialization and trade, it makes more sense to consider it closely related to our psychological mutations provoked by crescendo individualism in modern society, which is itself, closed related to physical comfort as the highest value: Once lonely, much more prolific and therefore, egoist.

Individualism is the most effective economic booster system known, it paradoxically leads to collective wealth and prosperity. After Adam Smith, that would be an economic good consequence of our egoism. Nevertheless, just to counterbalance the whole thing, Emile Durkheim points out individualism statistically connected to growth in suicide rate.

Hence we have the price of a general flourishing life: A damage of mental and emotional conditions, paranoia, vanity and apathy. Even though, the development of this inflated self-esteem are indeed necessary nowadays. So what to do now?

Shall we put our whole social circle in a balance to see who still carries a droplet of fraternity or who is already totally contamined by conditional exchange? How to separate emergency from foolish emotional matters? Who is stronger enough to face its own mess and deal with it? The evolution is taking us to a extrem form of social independency, is that a good thing? Well... "I don't care! I'd rather sink -- then call anybody for help!"

Yue Minjun - Execution

1995

150 x 300 cm.
Oil on Canvas

(click to enlarge)

Wheter the violent disarray caused by modern art or the rise of digital art packed with worldwide approach, something certainly displaced the cultural eyes of the western hemisphere. Seeking inexperienced aesthetics and fresh co-relations, we put our artistic overdeveloped field (where everything seems to be already done) in a second plan and finally twist our head around.

The hassles and the emancipation of the biggest emerging countries Brazil, China, Russia and India allows a counterpoint in originality and makes the universalization of the art history a reality. Taking China as an example, the open communism enabled artists to research and experiment new visual possibilities, inasmuch as it doesn't overtly criticizes the state. Yet, does this command still match the globalization context?

In 1996 the english stockbroker Trevor Simon founded the picture "Execution" by Yue Minjun hidden in Hong Kong Gallery and bought it for $32,000, under the conditions of keeping the artwork a secret to protect Yue Minjun from political harassments.

Eleven years later the picture was sold for nearly $6 million at Sotheby's auction house in London. Yue Minjun is currently the most important active artist in the People's Republic of China and some of his paintings have already broken records as the most expensive canvases in the history.

The grinning faces are self-portraits of the chinese artist, exhaustively applied in his works, it couldn't represent better China's Cynical Realism. In "Execution", a brilliant satire on the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989, these laughs overlap the canvas and bewilder every sign of seriousness or manifest. There are no guns or military uniforms, everything collapses into the comical faces.


Joke or manifest, Execution and its disclosure reforces the conscience of an underlaying linked world. Such bridges, being aerial, marine, electromagnetic or digital, are an alternative for artists in countries with the contrast of outbursting economy and government pressure to somehow overcome.

Jean Dubuffet - Untitled

1978

35 x 50 cm

Watercolour on paper

(click to enlarge)

Choosing an untitled illustration to present Jean Dubuffet seemed just perfect. Deliberations aside, its a free black and white watercolour on paper puzzling untamed forms covered with chiaroscuro.

His innovative work is incredibly controversial, since they renounce all possible academic rules of artistry, which launched his very own term "Art Brut" to future generations. (english relecture as "outsider art" by art critic Roger Cardinal)

The artist was inspired by books like "Artistry of the Mentally Ill" by Hans Prinzhorn and "Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler" (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist) by Dr. Walter Morgenthaler. He kept a collection of works from mentally ill, prisioners and children and explored laboredly these rough expressions without the scholarly control, developing a style that should transcend it.

"Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses - where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere - are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professions. After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, lived so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade." - Jean Dubuffet. Place à l'incivisme (Make way for Incivism). Art and Text no.27 (Dec. 1987 - Feb 1988). p.36

If we for a day, could forget all formalities, break all social rules and hence, speak, love and produce without safe restrictions or meaningless blockades, how would that be? Certainly a mess. However, surprisingly authentic.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - Chocolat Dansant Dans Un Bar

1896
Bridgeman Art Library/Musee Toulouse Lautrec
Albi, France

28 x 21 cm
Photo color relief illustration

(click to enlarge)

The Irish and American Bar was a quite famous bar on the rue Royale, known for hard drinkers and populated by famous figures of parisian bohemia. It was pictured five times by Henri de Toulouse Lautrec.

Chocolat, the notorious cuban clown would also go there with his partner Footit after the circus show and perform once in a while. At one of the happenings he was eternized by Lautrec, dancing drunk at the bar. Ralph, a half american barman from San Franciso, very known for his ability in mixing exceptional cocktails, stares at him together with other devotees of the far from overblown, smoky place.

Footit and Chocolat began at the Cirque Médrano in 1886, prospering throughout the 1890s and early 1900s at the most fashionable Parisian circus, the Nouveau Cirque. Their slapstick pranks, in which Chocolat was the victim of the violent, yet apathetic Footit, were popular with all levels of society, attracting the attention of many intellectuals and artists.

An alcoholic for most of his adult life, Toulouse-Lautrec was a frequent guest of the bar and mostly the last one to leave the place. The artist was placed in a sanatorium shortly before his death. He died from complications due to alcoholism and syphilis at the family estate in Malromé, fewer than three months before his 37th birthday.

David Hockney - American Collectors

1968
Los Angeles

Acrylic on canvas
213.4 x 304.8 cm (83 7/8 x 120 in.)

(click to enlarge)

A great portrait by the frail, yet striking style of David Hockney, an important contributor to the British Pop art movement of the 1960s, also famous for his photographic collages and watercolour portraits.

Two members of the wealthy ruling class of Los Angeles are personified by 20th century manneristic figures typifying american affluent art collectors.

Pushing the borders of caricature, their unbalanced faces have traces of lunacy, detachment and wickedness, their bodies match exactly the sculptures placed in their fancy garden: Fred Weisman stands rigid just as the stony William Turnbull sculpture in front of him, Marcia Weisman however seems to weave her arms into the pink vintage gown, an echo of the Henry Moore sculpture in the background.

The transposing of physical form from art to collector and their weird expressions bring a delicate topic to the surface, the connection between power and tedium. In a material plan they are similar to their purchase, but the indifference in the face of both nobles takes them miles (or millions) away from the costly fine art.