6/28/2006

Laura Owens

25 comments:

Painter said...

California

JD said...

I am missing the gene for liking these. Can someone 'splain?

no-where-man said...

think this is 2004 and was shown at gavins.
peter panny, look easy at first but fairly complex mix of washyness and thick paint. pleasynessy heard this was in contrast to her personality but never met.

Michael Cross said...

This one seems to be story-telling at its best. One of the few postings I've seen that didn't make me look first at distracting technique, but got me caught up immediately in the myth. And a nice tree, to boot. This is a painting I shouldn't like, but do.

jeff said...

ACK!!!

jeff said...

or woof...

poppy said...

I would like to see this stuff in person. This would make for a wicked bad childrens book. I would love it as a child but i wouldn't be scared enough. I think if she's going to keep on in this direction she should look at Richard Scarey, put way more stuff in there and then some scarey ass dead donkeys or something. Personally her loose stuff with empty spaces seems way better than this. Maybe she felt she mastered that and needs to be a little more representational. I hate that blue monkey. She must want me to hate this, that's the ticket. I want to smash that deer over the head. /Sorry

dubz said...

BB, it is obviously a dog-shaped monkey. even i can see that.

triple diesel said...

Cross, I think if you saw this in person, you would notice the technique. I see only a little storytelling here and instead a painterly picture of a scene dark in a childish kind of way.

This relates to something important about LO. Do you first notice the picture, or do you first notice the painting (textures, techniques, etc)? Of course, that's very subjective.

The image is important, but I suspect that it's really a means to set a mood: the image generates whimsy, so we welcome the the ways she "plays" with the paint.

triple diesel said...

Cross, I think if you saw this in person, you would notice the technique. I see only a little storytelling here and instead a painterly picture of a scene dark in a childish kind of way.

This relates to something important about LO. Do you first notice the picture, or do you first notice the painting (textures, techniques, etc)? Of course, that's very subjective.

The image is important, but I suspect that it's really a means to set a mood: the image generates whimsy, so we welcome the the ways she "plays" with the paint.

youth--less said...

It's a terribly good painting. The Princess' Nightmare

youth--less said...

Don't forget: only other painters notice the technique first. Normal people look at the painting.

zipthwung said...

Overrrrrrrated but who cares. As good as the hockney, which stuffily represents stuffy upper class newlyweds, or living-in-sinners, or so I imagine.

LO gets a lot of mileage out of the hard edged texture over blurred stained bg - to set up space and to create contrast. If we separate that out as a "trick" or "device" like using a lense or attaching ones brush to a stick with a hose clamp, what are we left with?

Another device - the warm brown over the cool ground, senhances the effect.

But look, the dog is blue! There are other blue animals - ghosts! Obviously the tree is haunted by the stained background.

As Donald Kuspit says about frankenthaler, there is little emotional depth here - and what other kind of depth is there?

In conclusion, Charlottes Web by EB white compared to Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Discuss.

zipthwung said...

COCOA PUFFS

iN A GOOD WAY.

jeff said...

Its kind of like 19 century illustration.
Arthur Rackham which is not a bad thing.
I kind of like her work its so odd.
The space she is creating is full of story book cliches but I think that's the point.

no-where-man said...

it hits me for some reason maybe just from haveing the Babylon Now article on my wall for what is it 4 years. man time flys

"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." If turned around, Yeats's famous verse fits the contemporary art world: Things run together; the center only grows.

youth--less said...

Then with a slow smile turned the lady round
And looked upon her people; and as when
A stone is flung into some sleeping tarn,
The circle widens till it lip the marge,
Spread the slow smile through all her company.
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Idylls of the King

Debra Maypole said...

i LOVE this artist. i love her because of the color, space, cool, restaurant mural feel of the landscape. the animals and boats feel like they are superfluous. filled in afterwards, graffitied in. shouldn't be there.

Anonymous said...

Ok, for a response... how about... the different way curvy bits and their interpretation cross the different mazes of cultural signifiers (remind me to cross out that and add bits), from play cards to calendars, to romantics, to slicks, to and from our online jpeg, fantastics, indeed all of them, not one mark less a fellow, though probably less about bed grits.
If I were to think about how I can make a coherent beverage, an after dark cocktail that we all can sip, I would surely swirl and shake and come up with a similar potion remixed--of such these many splendid mimes adrift.
The two pre-toot-toots back there are on a collision course and hold none of the curves that mint the flesh of the picture. Why is that?
Sails are most certain the most beautiful in their bellows and creases, though from a long off distance can be interpreted as sticks and bits.

Sticks and Bendy Bits

zipthwung said...

The foreground interacts with the background - in the way that matise or whoever i forget, but you know the picture with the tree in the foreground and the mountain in the bg and they interact, the logic of picture space.

There is a wind, here, despite the indoor seating.

Martin said...

palooka - this is the painting that was in the biennial. i remember those two ships facing off in the background, the one with an american flag, the big howling skull in the sky, and the start of the war in iraq.

i think i read somewhere that she takes a long long time to plan everything out, every little color and splotch, before starting a painting - then makes the painting in a day or so.

zipthwung said...

I think this image is a little "hot" in that the contrast is up and the colors more saturated - it was hung opposite some other painting I think? Looks gooder here.

jpegCritic said...

Awwome development.

Martin said...

this is a big painting and was hung on the center of a wall, there may have been smaller works by other artists on either side, but i can't recall. i think a big cecily brown was on an adjacent wall in the same room.

it does look a lot different here, but i like the real one better.

Kate said...

I remember seeing a show of hers in Miami. My initial impression was being amazed that she could dare to use all the "tricky" painting techniques that we used to thumb our noses at, i.e., almost Bob Ross or one of those TV painters.

Then I spent time with them, and felt that they were incredibly liberating, and I had a revelation, "I don't have to paint important things, I can just paint what makes me happy, like little fuzzy animals and things!" (honest)