4/21/2006

Jocelyn Hobbie

34 comments:

Painter said...

Jocelyn Hobbie
@ Bellwether
134 Tenth Avenue,
between 18th and 19th Streets
New York, NY 10011

Edna said...

I actually think they're kind of hot.

JD said...

There are things I like about Hobbie's work. I like the strange sexual psychology of these, and am most appreciative of the very very odd moments, like the stand-up breasts, the girl's weirdly fixed gaze, and the way her hair falls onto the bed: it's like a porcelain waterfall. I wish it all looked even more transformed in that way, pushed further somehow. (Did anyone see that amazing Christian Schaade show at the Neue Museum a few years back?) I feel, though, that often the rest of the paintings (the grounds) are not painted as compellingly; the curtain, wall, and bed seem weak here. I also wonder if these need to escape just a little from Balthus' shadow.

rainbowandskull said...

JD,
Christian Schaade thanks for reminding me. Good comparison. What a crazy dude.

Edna said...

jd, right on. I think the grounds are kind of weak, too - but the expressions and the eye/breast association is compelling in person. Somehow the goofiness subsides and a deeper sexual psychology takes over. They're totally twisted in a gentle, loving way.

I guess that's what I meant by hot (not the Paris Hilton kind of hot, but the slow burn kind. Like a dream).

JD said...

yes, bb. That makes them very very good indeed.

ec said...

The surfaces are actually rather nice, oil grounds that let paint skid and dance. In general I found the show well painted; especially the combination of really strange, intense colors and offsetting soft, blurry edges with hard lace patterns. The patterns were a bit of a surprise actually, I usually remember the work more starkly and graphically, but these are genuinely painted.
Her mouths add to the hot feeling described in posts above. I found the paintings very erotically painted.

no-where-man said...

i am going to go with if it makes you horney its good. 'fuckable' is a great form of crit.

form swallows function

no-where-man said...

oops i ment form follows function (my bad).

zipthwung said...

What the fuck is she looking at? Better not be looking at me.

Reminds me of Tooker

Cindy Sherman or Hans Bellmer - prosthetics they call them rockets you know? Ready to take off but no where to land.

Cool breeze, makes me feel fine....on the crystal set...and nothing on TV.

In conclusion I am so tired of pastel palettes I am so tired of pastel palettes I am so tired of pastel palettes.

Edna said...

Lisa Yuskavage is rarely boner-inducing. These are way hotter.

zipthwung said...

See the curtains hanging in the window
In the evening on a Friday night
A little light shining through the window
Lets me know that everything's alright


Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through the jasmine in my mind
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through my, makin me feel all-right
Making me feel, making me feel fine
Makes me feel right
Blowing through the jasmine in my mind


see the paper layin on the sidewalk
a little music from the house next door
who lives next door?
so i walk on up to the doorstep
threw the screen and then i cross the floor


summer breeze makes me feel fine
blowing through my mind love
summer breeze makes me fine
blowing yeah your makin me all right
makin me feel making me feel fine
make me feel right
blowin through the jasmine in my mind...in my mind


sweet days of summer, the jasmine's in bloom
July is dressed up and playing her tune
when I come home, from a hard day's work
And you're waiting waitin waitin waitin there, yes you're waiting there
Without a care in the world


I see the smile awaiting in the kitchen
Food a-cooking and a place there for two
you, i feel the arms that reach out to hold me
In the evening when the day is through


Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through my mind
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through my, making me feel allright
Making me feel, making me feel fine
Makes me feel right

Blowing through the jasmine in my, blowing blowing(x4)
Blowing through the jasmine in my, blowing

(skat)

Blowing through the jasmine in my mind

zipthwung said...

If you like this you might also like Canadian Magical Realist Alex Coleville

Dumbpainter said...
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dubz said...

i think perky's a bit of an understatement.

youth--less said...

looking at her eyes and nipples i'd say she was afraid.

or cold.

or both.

smoke em if you got em.

Dumbpainter said...
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no-where-man said...

she is like the norman rockwell of chelsea tounge in cheaks

zipthwung said...

I like jasmine in my mind though.

Don't you look at me. Look at me.

Martin said...

soft hair, soft skirt, wet eyes. her soft pooling hair is as luxurious as her body. the skirt looks like velour. man's fantasy painting, so HOT.

kind of like ridley howard, if anybody, but a lot more sensual.

Max said...

Well there is obviously a reference here to those dutch paintings (mostly Vermeer I think) of women standing by the window, which served to cast a pretty light upon them. I don't really know what art histroians have said about the meaning/signifigance of that pose, but I would assume there has been some disucssion. Maybe something about the domestic world of women at the time?

Anyway, this painting seems to be toying with that idea, updating it somewhat perhaps, showing how ideals of domesticity and fertility in women have become eroticised in today's world.

operation enduring artist said...

ok, i just looked over all 32 of the comments and it seems that 3/4 of them bring up other artists in relation to this work? what does this say (grand rhetoricle question)? what is the dynamic that instigates us to bring up so many 'looks like' comments...is the work hopelessly derivative?

Dumbpainter said...
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operation enduring artist said...

ursulas dad,
reading the comment counter below the jpeg doesnt take much counting...i was just making a comparative observation. every artist gets compared to someone, yes...a valid way of contextualizing the observation/criticism. BUT (!) take a look over the comments for this work and it is riddled with comparisons to other artists. i think that says something dont you? what is it that everyone wants to compare this work to others as opposed to reading it for what it is? are we all tired today?

Dumbpainter said...
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Max said...

what is the dynamic that instigates us to bring up so many 'looks like' comments...

Well... when you are confronted with an image as cliche as the female nude in art, its tough not to have it bring a million other paintings to mind. If this had been a landscape painting, same deal, it would be instantly compaired to the thousands of landscapes born before it. The dynamic that is causing all these "looks like" comments is probably just its subject, the female nude, probably one of the oldest subjects of art making in the history of artmaking.

youth--less said...

Two pictures in a row of classic femininity-- overtly sexual/passive/frightened women. Don't you see the fearful expressions and postures?

Both Painted by women. Are they trying to bring back an endangered species?

If anything, they seem to be questioning the 80s/90s Bitch Goddess icon.

youth--less said...

Wow--she is holly hobbie's daughter. Is that the holly hobbie that does those little 70s cute kid couples? Sick.

The rest of the work is a little more wry than this girl on bed. I think she is just making fun of her own middle class femininity. Nothing a little kidnapping by the SLA couldnt cure.

Dumbpainter said...
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ec said...

Nobody has mentioned the strange veins that pulse in the foreheads or arms of Hobbie's subjects. They imbue her paintings with a sense of dread from within the figure, as if the figure is not at ease in her situation, which feels far from Yuskavage's figures. I don't know if I agree w/ closeup that it is fearful, but I would say trepidatious...a sense of entrapment, maybe, that underlies the usual expected scenario.
Hobbie's transparent pthalo greens and blues in combination with unlikely chromatic bedfellows are not evident in the example shown here as in other works in the show.
I would add the rounded and exaggerated forms of John Graham's drawings to references Ridley Howard, Balthus, Shaad, which helps shape the dialogue for this work...

JD said...

ec, I will look for the strange veins when I go to see the show. And you're right, there really is a lineage of artists who stylize the human form in this rounded, surreal way. Ridley Howard is a definite. It probably comes from Giotto and Masaccio, do you think?

ec said...

Hmmm, interesting, jd- I was thinking of the Mannerist stylizations of Pontormo or Bronzino as well as, obliquely, Sumerian figures. But historically Giotto and Masaccio make sense, though for me they are sacrosanct, in that they're trying to figure it out rather than stylize.

JD said...

Ah, good point, ec. The weirdness of Bronzino. He's a friend of Schaade, too, no doubt. Smoothed-out bizarreness.

walter10021 said...

slut