7/10/2006

Stella Vine

64 comments:

Painter said...

Great Britain

no-where-man said...

Opening in Detroit at MONA


When Charles Saatchi bought two of her paintings in early 2004 Stella Vine rocketed into the media spotlight. Inside Out North East meets this former stripper from Alnwick who has become the latest sensation in "Brit Art".

zipthwung said...

im all for regionalism but this is about as regional as the folk art on the walls of any bar in williamsburg. Just walk into several bars with art on the wall and compare them.

The thing is is many of these paintings are earnest attempts to make sublime or uncanny images that attract and hold ones attention.

This painting is definitely coming from the eyes of the folk - the gaze or whatever.

Which makes the joke funnier.

I never got the whole Princess di thing, but Im not british.

How about that head but in the world cup? WOnder what dude said to zidane?

sloth said...

gotta disagree with you bluebalz; I think there's a lot to talk about here. It's an interesting phenomenon that such bad painting can be so successful. Her work has an appealing brashness and raw energy & humor/pathos; almost enough to overcome the amazing lack of skill. I would place her in context with Tracy Emin, Katherine Bernhardt, and Elizabeth Peyton.

poppy said...

just as good or better than half the paintings posted on this site

no-where-man said...

i think personal aspects of her work make this narrative interesting, and i agree - glib funny, Elizabeth Peyton is quite formally talented, i am not sure i can see them in the same context.

Have to admit however most of what i see in the NY gallerys strikes me as the fashion of 'bad painting' almost structured and academic.

flesheater99 said...

Hi Paul,
Could you come over.
I'm fucking bored.
Maybe bring some Sonics records
and some Georges Roualt paintings?

ps
maybe you could gimme a fucking break or something too?

sloth said...

definitely not even in the same universe as Peyton, formally. But certainly they share a fascination with celebrity; both are celeb portraitists. It would be interesting to see the 2 hanging together on a wall... Peyton's touch is so deft, her work would blow this away on that level, but these are very not-coy. That said, there's an East-Villageyness about them that I find a little tired or something.

dubz said...

Sounds to me like Stella's making the appropriate type of work considering her backstory. They're putting out a message, and it's dark - not about skill or beauty or real success. Style is inextricably linked to content, and it should be. Too bad if it looks like shit. Some stuff needs to.

James Wolanin said...

Bad is the new good

dubz said...

no, no... not that simple. come on.

zipthwung said...

oh gee, sometimes I like french crullers but other times I like a good fried flatbread hot with powdered sugar.
Sometimes you use the wrong fork in the right place. Sometimes you dont use a fork.

Stick it

I think a lot of people heard about Billy Childish in the nineties or whenever. Long time ago in fruit fly years.

zipthwung said...

oh gee, sometimes I like french crullers but other times I like a good fried flatbread hot with powdered sugar.
Sometimes you use the wrong fork in the right place. Sometimes you dont use a fork.

Stick it

I think a lot of people heard about Billy Childish in the nineties or whenever. Long time ago in fruit fly years.

poppy said...

so what are the institutions telling us to do these days exactly?

a dog turd is still just a dog turd, right,.. and a urinal a urinal - so what? so paint like damien loeb everyone? how much more finesse until your personally satisfied?
My question is why everyone is soo worried about what everyone else is doing? who gives a crap. all these painters with ulcers will never show us anything new...

zipthwung said...

You know that flaming bag of shit prank? I think it would be funnier if you did it to yourself somehow. Like if you had alzheimers and you forgot where you lived.

Professor Mouth said...

Pfft. Kalm James is a windbag. I enjoyed his rant, if purely as an example of how to expend the most syllables possible while saying absolutely nothing. 'Good painting is good painting, and this is not good painting, blah-the-fuck-blah'. Gee, how stirring. If the lame painting is more interesting that its even lamer critics, you've got a problem. And how should we judge painting? By the amount hours spent in front of the canvas? Through critical consensus of the nation's most highly circulated news periodicals? Great, can't wait to see what kind of boring, overworked mediocrity would land in Kalm's top five. Inka Essenhigh? John Currin? Zak Smith? Wangechi Mutu? Natalie Frank? All of them seem to do their homework and show up to class on time. Too bad they're all boring as dry fuck.

poppy said...

professor,
said like a true mouth!

i just did that prank to myself - after reading last comment i nearly shit myself..
I will be using this line from now on,
"boring as dry fuck" - yes dat be my line.

no-where-man said...

asked over on another board:

"i noticed Stella Vine is opening up in Detroit"

Yes, they need someplace to park all the unsold gas-guzzlers

jeff said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
jeff said...

Professor Mouth seems like the afternoon cocktale sessions are not working. Try starting at 9, say with a good shot of cognac in your coffee.

I don't like Currin , but I think Essenhigh, Smith are kind of interesting.

I've seen better examples of Stella Vine's work, this is not a good representation of her work.
http://www.stellavine.com

I like some of it, but she is naive in her style of painting which as a subject was beaten to death a while ago on this blog so lets not go there.

jeff said...

Like I said she is a niave painter, its not her fault that shes getting the time of day.

I think most of her work is pretty bad some of it is as someone said "bad east village end of the 80's painting".

I think the last 2 paintings represent both ends of the spectrum of what is or are bad paintings

jeff said...

I was just looking at the Brooklyn Rail and reading review about Judy Glantzman.
Now with all the discussion on expressionism and east village painting(Dix, Grosz)how come there is nothing or even a mention of this show?
Its over now but hey this is good work.
She has a track record, is still around making interesting work.

Its not my blog but hey how about some good painters for a change.

cha said...

yes, who are the "good" painters working right now???
esp. in and around NY.
How subjective would that list be?!

jeff said...

well the one i mentioned is pretty good and I don't like all of her work. what I do like makes me think that she can paint, and has some good ideas, its good so why not.

Also Judy Glantzman is not right out of grad school so that is good as well.

What do mean by subjective?
Of course it would be subjective, but the last 6 paintings on the blog have been pretty bad, and the theme seems to me to be mediocre to complete crap.

Martin said...

painter posted glantzman in may -

http://painternyc.blogspot.com/2006/05/judy-glantzman.html

these maybe not done yet? maybe interesting -

Carrie Moyer. Melissa Meyer. Wolf Kahn. Joe Fyfe. Stephen Westfall. Lois Dodd. James Hyde. Jeff Koons.

i wonder if any artists have contacted painter and asked NOT to be featured. maybe.

poppy said...

someone mentioned being angry with kalm james.. I doubt if anybody is, these are just funny reactions to funny paintings..

Painting is like hockey or sports.
sometimes it's fun to watch the player with finesse and sometimes it's fun to watch the guy who kicks the shit out of these players.. It all really depends what kind of mood your in.

jpegCritic said...

ah, and the occasional mouth-butt for added entertainment.
bravo!

Anonymous said...

Stella Vine is fine.

For all those having craft pangs I would recommend a run with a gymnast! Trudy!

...........; the hand, the spanner, the dart of femaleeeze...

brian edmonds said...

The work is interesting. It looks like folk painting. Check out Mose T or Jimmy Lee Sudduth. Both Alabama folk artist. Both well known. I can do without the whole Princess DI thing. Thats a little tired.

Martin said...

have you seen her wonder woman painting? it is perfect - she is like a deer in the headlights, midspin, suddenly aware of her own vulnerability.

i think that's my favorite, not into most, like some.

no-where-man said...

it is worth noteing she was born in 1969.

no-where-man said...

for me good, i get that she seems to being grouped with a "out of grad school" frame,

cha said...

sorry Painter...I just meant who is considered "good" as in.. who would a visitor to NY , coming in for just a few days, need to look up!

jeff said...

cha,
depends on what kind of work you like.
I'm not from NYC but if you like figrutive work i would check out the forum gallery, or marlborough for the 57 street fix.

There are loads in Chelsea area.
the DFN Gallery is ok.

jpegCritic said...

And so her work, by loose consensus,
doesn't work as 'painting' formally speaking.
Do they work otherwise, in the larger context
of art, rather, cultural expression/commentary?
Is there a unique voice that drives these images--
that merits the apparent attention these paintings
already command either by accident or otherwise?
Just curious.

cha said...

Thanks Painter.... Forum is Odd nerdrum I think and I like his work!! Marlborough....had Francis Bacon?! rings a bell somewhere...I like his paintings a lot!
I'm sure there's lotsa choice out there...it's just a time thing!!

cha said...

jpeg...on the lowest level..if you get some reaction/ attention, good or bad...something is working!

zipthwung said...

hey Joint Photographic Experts Group Critic...

I was saying above that I thought that audience and voice was important - in that the "voive" was of the "people" and the audience was...

1) The people (to laught
2) The people (to be outraged)
3) Aristocrats (to laugh)
4) Aristocrats (to be outraged)

Am I leaving something out?

THis is an old joke, and some people think the people dont get it, because some of the people dont - but as the dude says, you can fool some of the people some of the time but if everyone is in on the joke then you have a clusterfuck.

But why tell jokes in the first place? This painting depends on an "other" nominally someone to "laugh at" not "with."

Stupid people? Stupid Aristocrats? Or is this not a joke at all?

If this painting is not a joke - the faux naif style being a red herring, or an attempt at immediacy in the art brut sense (was art brut a joke?) then it has pathos.

There are good indicators that girl can paint, or could if she tried. One is the diamond necklace, where the gesture creates the impression of lace/diamonds quickly but without fussyness. The eyes, rouge and mouth (the face part) taken together are also facile.

So my interpretation is that this painting is in fact an empathetic commentary on the objectification of a real person's soap opera - that is turning a the mundane death of a real person into a myth.

Which is what art does, often, if not allways. Ergo, this is a good painting and constitutes art.

And it's funny.

But it's ugly.

zipthwung said...

By red herring I mean "meta" or something.

jeff said...

ACK!

no-where-man said...

Aristocrats love to be Unfloofed... it makes them feel more Aristocraty

zipthwung said...

Indeed.

zipthwung said...

us and them

jeff said...

?

youth--less said...

The cognative dissonance it takes to be an american is ____

zipthwung said...

got a symphony in the OT!

Anonymous said...

At her best she's Robert Pollard...someone that's old enough to know better... but can't help the fact that they still love/need the ache of longing, passion, adolescence, most people hedge their bets with this type of stuff...Peyton for example, this gal tears into it...Rock and Roll english style, the English are not the best painters really...Hogarth, Gainsborough excluded... what they really do well is produce pop/punk/rockstars..the English have a thriving pop culture They are collectors by nature, selectors in the arts..The YBA's tried to make what the English are good at and strap it to painting...Tabloid worthiness, high design, punkish pluck, Stella Vine when she's good does this better than the rest of the lot, she risks failure on a fairly regular basis, which I imagine is good, her work is a bit painful when it does not court danger.
She has done a painting of pallbearers walking through snow that is sickening in how good it is...She paints with the desparation of lost youth. That desparation usually finds other avenues in adulthood, I think it's good for painting. She is knowing.

Her Diana painting is based on the primary's...she get's from blue to yellow without going through green, that gray's a bit funky but Vermeer would like it nonetheless.

Yeah that's right I said Vermeer...I really think she's on par with Vermeer, cause I talked about him in the same sentence, must mean that.

Anonymous said...

gazinia, I'm having trouble locating the shit-in-bag reference... which artist is it under?.. remember it vaguely.

Anonymous said...

gazinia, just reread your comment...Vermeer does make extraordinary paintings that use blue and yellow and don't go through green...they go through the center of the color wheel and back out...it's unique in my opininon and lends the work a specific appeal. Clearly Stella Vine doesn't consciously have this in mind but she comes across it nonetheless..and I think in talking about her work it's a relative point to bring up...just a blip that crossed my keyboard.

zipthwung said...

shitbag: 3:02 pm this thread
Im reminded of the Berger book "Ways of Seeing," where he sees dead people and then theres this great bathtub scene with a rotting corpse and then its all a frozen maze at Marienbad.

Anonymous said...

I vaguely remember reading the Berger book, or remember getting it and not reading it...it's fiction right? It's a nice little painting isn't it.

youth--less said...

I thought the grey was very Gainsbourough, Miller. Glad u mentioned it.

harold hollingsworth said...

"When the back story is much more interesting than the painting, you know you've got a problem."
Couldn't agree more...

Anonymous said...

Closeuup i'll have to take your word on it regarding the grey, although it's against my better judgment when you use "u" instead of "you". It's two letters, tap-tap. that's all, two touches to the keyboard in order to not come across like a prepubescent girl.

Harold Hollingsworth...I agree supress that interesting back story...no marketing, be ugly, good art always wins out.

cha said...

"back story"... maybe it's like meeting a new person. First judgement by appearance and then the back story adds juicy dimension!

youth--less said...

I priviledge pre-pubescent girls, miller. Don't u worry yr pretty little head about me.

youth--less said...

Stella Vine is a natural.

Does that bug y'all?

zipthwung said...

u2

"I've got more talent in my pinkie than Lendl has in his whole body."--John McEnroe

no-where-man said...

thats y i mentioned her age. it is interesting she comes off "as a pre-pubescent girl" maybe damaged in an fun way.

Anonymous said...

In the twenty-first century we all will to be artists. So think, if you are one now--you're a step ahead. I use 'we', in a particular nourishing way. 'We' refers to 'us'. There are us. Them are them!

Them would refer to those of us who are them supporting us to be them, and in the pleasantness of situation, them us in support of us/them.
How, or in what way is this different to now?
Good question!
Before there were a limited number of matches in a matchbox.
Fifty if I recount (I would purchase the box that came with fifty one).
Now that we don't **** to count we are happier, and in a sense more prone to the artistic life... we among us them have these disposable lighters.
Back to the more hazarded...
a nice contract of temperament in the two recent posts.
I'm sure!
THEY ARE BOTH FINE!
OOP's out of time!

Anonymous said...

John McEnroe..."You cannot be serious" is the plaintive cry of the just and good. No-where-man turn off the computer... go to the adjoining room and give your disinterested wife a big smooch... in a damaged way of course...you're a real charmer.

youth--less said...

LOOOOVE johnny Mac. I've said it before. The man turned down 1M to play in S. Africa. Would u? Would I?

Somebody paint his portrait.

zipthwung said...

There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing.


We assert that the subject is crucial and only that

subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.

That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive

and archaic art.

-June 7, 1943

"No. Be afraid. Be very afraid."

"I will not be afraid of death and bane,
Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.

Red, Yellow and Blue, Stuff like that.

Anonymous said...

gazinia, the connection is the simple observation of color choice. The connection is one aspect of painting, I'm talking about red, yellow, and blueness in painting or rather Painting. To make a connection between Chopin and the Pet Shop Boys based on the sound of a few notes,is just that, about those few notes...who knows what it means...it's nice to try and string a few words together as to why it may be somehow related...maybe not.
The six year old's Stella Vine painting is different then the Stella Vine painting in that one can enter it knowing that an adult made it...it makes a big difference...seeing a painting and recognizing the developmental limitations(six-year-old) is different than realizing the choice of painting in a certain way...even though one's painterly gifts may be limited. Her paintings are good for painting...She paints like she really wants to paint, or rather be a painter, to participate...I respect that...all my petty concerns regarding painting and art production seem to slip off her back...she cranks it out, slaps it on the wall and takes wealthy peoples money in exchange...she shows her friends work, she buys other artist's work, she run's her own gallery...that punkish ethos combined with consumer knowingness is strange and in my opinion exciting.