This painting disappoints me. It is so 'Habitat'. I have been a fan of Fiona Rae. She had used graphics with a fresh spatial sense along with her great sense of color. Now it looks borrowed.
I'm a big lover of "design". TPL called it "uuummmph". I get the feeling that design has been discredited by many contempo painters, i'm guessing in the rush to be "cutting edge". Yet Fiona seems to retain it.
That looks cool, is she just smart and lucky? Or was she the first to do this. could someone clarify for me why she gets to be an important contemporary fine artist? "Her work is abstract, and makes a Postmodern use of a seemingly random assemblage of painterly applications in order to create new and unexpected juxtapositions on the canvas. It is a cool and much more cerebral version of Abstract Expressionism." Is that enough? Was she in the right place at the right time and Saatchi thought it looked cool and needed something to balance his out cow heads and bedsheets? Someone please enlighten me.
Those early Fae paintings were 'painterly' in the sense that they were very much about making a painting, drips and all. they were strategized in the overall construction, but the making of the paintings seemed very direct, thus the "uuummmph".
I like the way that she has contained those original paintings and brought them into a 'design friendly' context, even as I'm very skeptical of too much design.
I think Larry Pittman also made that break a few years back, and I think I appreciate the work that came just before the break more, perhaps because design strategy has become so common in the intervening years.
She's a masterful painter @ top the top of her game.
Urban outfitters started selling silkcreened paintings - wall hangings. Stuff to cover the wall. Whatyamacallit. Wallpaper.
Theres some fun spatial stuff just like in the Erica Svec. But thats the realm of formal design - art 201 - my point with Dali comparison is that he, like many painters, used formal space dividing rules to sustain a composition, if not a concept. Artists like Mc Escher and Ryan Mc Guiness took it to a mathematical extreme. Look up aperiodic tiling and you can have a career.
But thats only one tool in the shed.
There are others - if you grab the flashlight by the door and shake it you will illuminate several bodies I have hung up with the greased winter sleds and the radio flyer inscribed with the rosy cross to give it a bit of hosomi.
Appologists for Deitch and his stable of designers, illustrators and performers will say his gallery isnt about subtlety but subcultural lifestyle and spectacle. Art=Life. For example, is a popular conundrum.
How can painting be life? Is that all there is?
Reminds me of when I was trying to fit in and I joined cub scouts. Jesus christ what a mind fuck.
Erica Svec looks like she doesnt know what shes going to paint before she lays down her first grey. Im with that school - read the tea leaves. auger the tidings Screw the pooch. Agnes martin paints with her mind and then with her hand. Im suspicious of that because the only people I know that do that are graphic designers. They know what they like.
REAL paintings are not very good wallpaper. Keep them to yourself.
I know psychadelia from a black light poster I won at the local craft fair. A cheeta. I dint hav black light, though because UV light has mutagenic properties. Thanks mom!
“I wanted it to have the quirkiness of Superman III,” he says. “They wanted something sleek like The Matrix. I don’t see myself with this kind of darkness.” He gets increasingly impassioned as the memories flow back. “The producer was an idiot,” he says. “This guy thought I was a cool director. But I was not cool, even if I was popular with artists. It wasn’t about having an attitude. It was about not having an attitude.”
Spontanaeity of method is not the issue. lots of graphic designers dont know where they are going before they start. Conversely lots of painters do know exactly what they are going to paint before they start.
Anyway, this painting reminds me of David Salle--in the accrual and placement of images. But FR is using abstract imagery mostly. Juxtaposition of abstract imagery is a very cool modern song.
Dont you think FR's choice of color palette that looks like decoration or packaging is really working? I think rite on pulse.
I thought her early work when she first got success were kick ass paintings! They were shit ugly at times and gorgeous in others and always seemed fresh.
The work she did just a few years ago were bascially tighter versions of these new ones but more boring!
These new ones just seem like she is trying to retain the freshness of the early work so she has taken the boring ones from a couple years back and swooped loose paint strokes over them.
The early work was about painting and even though i though that was bullshit, it made sense for the time, now it just seems like she is going through the motions, I don't get anything from them other than...ooh, nice splotch of paint over there...etc.......
dont really like them but somehow they are impressive but too neat, clean for my taste, the more you look at them they get better, to dismiss them outright is wrong which i did but then i went back, still got kiind nauseated by them though, just a bit too decorative but maybe that was the point. try the greenbaums next door or even the black and white ellsworth kelleys for a different take on abstraction.
"Svec uses the language to explore. Rae uses it to make paintings." I don't think Svec is just exploring, I think that she wants to make paintings, too.
The gray here is gorgeous. It is a color and has feeling, not like the Svec gray. But this painting is just pretty. The colors in the huge drip on the side are too much from the "70% cool, 30 % warm" mentality. I think she is a graphic designer who wants to be a painter. Maybe she is going thru a hard creative time- god knows we all do - but perhaps will let some ugliness creep back in.
Erica spins this Fiona gal on her finger...spins her. Fiona is self conscious careerist one trick pony..it's dead...mouth to mouth ain't helping. She's an English painter... an oxymoron.
Stick to yer Kate Moss and your Pete Doherty jus' stop painting...just stop. Stick to yer Stella McCartney...do what you do well...skinny jeans...will someone take Gary Hume outback and show him a good painting.
Just because there is paint and canvas doesn't make them paintings. Ersatz. She mixes all the right ingredients but she still comes up phoney baloney. One from column A and one from column B. Rich people decor, nothing more. It just goes to show how a good sense of color and proficient paint handling and spanning the spectrum of abstraction can yield nothing. They tell us nothing that we don't already know.
All talk and no trouser...to see this work in person...art in the dark plus Elle Decor...which isn't always a bad idea but somehow Fiona dots the I's and the T's a good bit too hard. Right, luv?
Look! There is a huge difference in quality and longevity between the De Keyser and a Rea. If I were unable to see this then there is good reason to question just about everything. All art is good-- as a way of life. Though give me better! We each applaud different ways--and I have to admit I'm a slow clapper--sharp but slow--it's in the blood!!
43 comments:
Fiona Rea @
Pace
534 West 25th Street
NYC
now thats the way to use pink and grey
I think it's lacking a little hyperrealistic doodad somewhere,to cover all the bases..
Awesome and tight.
Great show title.
I retain my comparison w/ Erica Svec.
This painting disappoints me. It is so 'Habitat'. I have been a fan of Fiona Rae. She had used graphics with a fresh spatial sense along with her great sense of color. Now it looks borrowed.
I'm a big lover of "design". TPL called it "uuummmph". I get the feeling that design has been discredited by many contempo painters, i'm guessing in the rush to be "cutting edge". Yet Fiona seems to retain it.
nice!
BTW -- It's Rae. Fiona Rae.
Svec uses the language to explore. Rae uses it to make paintings.
That looks cool, is she just smart and lucky? Or was she the first to do this. could someone clarify for me why she gets to be an important contemporary fine artist? "Her work is abstract, and makes a Postmodern use of a seemingly random assemblage of painterly applications in order to create new and unexpected juxtapositions on the canvas. It is a cool and much more cerebral version of Abstract Expressionism." Is that enough? Was she in the right place at the right time and Saatchi thought it looked cool and needed something to balance his out cow heads and bedsheets? Someone please enlighten me.
This idea that painting can be cutting edge is quaint.
Hey Closeup,
Those early Fae paintings were 'painterly' in the sense that they were very much about making a painting, drips and all. they were strategized in the overall construction, but the making of the paintings seemed very direct, thus the "uuummmph".
I like the way that she has contained those original paintings and brought them into a 'design friendly' context, even as I'm very skeptical of too much design.
I think Larry Pittman also made that break a few years back, and I think I appreciate the work that came just before the break more, perhaps because design strategy has become so common in the intervening years.
She's a masterful painter @ top the top of her game.
It is a Sexy pretty painting. They should use it as the design for an Urban Decay shadow box, don't you all think?
Urban outfitters started selling silkcreened paintings - wall hangings. Stuff to cover the wall. Whatyamacallit. Wallpaper.
Theres some fun spatial stuff just like in the Erica Svec. But thats the realm of formal design - art 201 - my point with Dali comparison is that he, like many painters, used formal space dividing rules to sustain a composition, if not a concept. Artists like Mc Escher and Ryan Mc Guiness took it to a mathematical extreme. Look up aperiodic tiling and you can have a career.
But thats only one tool in the shed.
There are others - if you grab the flashlight by the door and shake it you will illuminate several bodies I have hung up with the greased winter sleds and the radio flyer inscribed with the rosy cross to give it a bit of hosomi.
Appologists for Deitch and his stable of designers, illustrators and performers will say his gallery isnt about subtlety but subcultural lifestyle and spectacle. Art=Life. For example, is a popular conundrum.
How can painting be life? Is that all there is?
Reminds me of when I was trying to fit in and I joined cub scouts. Jesus christ what a mind fuck.
Erica Svec looks like she doesnt know what shes going to paint before she lays down her first grey. Im with that school - read the tea leaves. auger the tidings Screw the pooch. Agnes martin paints with her mind and then with her hand. Im suspicious of that because the only people I know that do that are graphic designers. They know what they like.
REAL paintings are not very good wallpaper. Keep them to yourself.
I know psychadelia from a black light poster I won at the local craft fair. A cheeta. I dint hav black light, though because UV light has mutagenic properties. Thanks mom!
“I wanted it to have the quirkiness of Superman III,” he says. “They wanted something sleek like The Matrix. I don’t see myself with this kind of darkness.” He gets increasingly impassioned as the memories flow back. “The producer was an idiot,” he says. “This guy thought I was a cool director. But I was not cool, even if I was popular with artists. It wasn’t about having an attitude. It was about not having an attitude.”
here
Spontanaeity of method is not the issue. lots of graphic designers dont know where they are going before they start. Conversely lots of painters do know exactly what they are going to paint before they start.
Anyway, this painting reminds me of David Salle--in the accrual and placement of images. But FR is using abstract imagery mostly. Juxtaposition of abstract imagery is a very cool modern song.
Dont you think FR's choice of color palette that looks like decoration or packaging is really working? I think rite on pulse.
am i the only one who doesn't really like these?
I thought her early work when she first got success were kick ass paintings! They were shit ugly at times and gorgeous in others and always seemed fresh.
The work she did just a few years ago were bascially tighter versions of these new ones but more boring!
These new ones just seem like she is trying to retain the freshness of the early work so she has taken the boring ones from a couple years back and swooped loose paint strokes over them.
The early work was about painting and even though i though that was bullshit, it made sense for the time, now it just seems like she is going through the motions, I don't get anything from them other than...ooh, nice splotch of paint over there...etc.......
dont really like them but somehow they are impressive but too neat, clean for my taste, the more you look at them they get better, to dismiss them outright is wrong which i did but then i went back, still got kiind nauseated by them though, just a bit too decorative but maybe that was the point. try the greenbaums next door or even the black and white ellsworth kelleys for a different take on abstraction.
"Spontanaeity of method is not the issue"
but it does impart the shibumi. Hosomi.
looking at painting
self sameness
Ehrewhon
Wabi Sabi?
"Svec uses the language to explore. Rae uses it to make paintings."
I don't think Svec is just exploring, I think that she wants to make paintings, too.
love it.
"I don't think Svec is just exploring, I think that she wants to make paintings, too."
I agree, she's not just making paintings.
I just want to explore.
Saatchi + Hong Kong + living in London = fertile ground for artists of this genre.
what are y'all looking for?
The gray here is gorgeous. It is a color and has feeling, not like the Svec gray. But this painting is just pretty. The colors in the huge drip on the side are too much from the "70% cool, 30 % warm" mentality. I think she is a graphic designer who wants to be a painter. Maybe she is going thru a hard creative time- god knows we all do - but perhaps will let some ugliness creep back in.
'By the time you see the bandwagon it's already too late'
Willy de K
Good point dharmabum! But if you wear Picasso's hat, nobody will notice it.
Erica spins this Fiona gal on her finger...spins her. Fiona is self conscious careerist one trick pony..it's dead...mouth to mouth ain't helping. She's an English painter... an oxymoron.
Stick to yer Kate Moss and your Pete Doherty jus' stop painting...just stop. Stick to yer Stella McCartney...do what you do well...skinny jeans...will someone take Gary Hume outback and show him a good painting.
they would look stunning with the interior of the Bellagio.
Just because there is paint and canvas doesn't make them paintings. Ersatz. She mixes all the right ingredients but she still comes up phoney baloney. One from column A and one from column B. Rich people decor, nothing more. It just goes to show how a good sense of color and proficient paint handling and spanning the spectrum of abstraction can yield nothing. They tell us nothing that we don't already know.
as if there is something out there that you dont know!
All talk and no trouser...to see this work in person...art in the dark plus Elle Decor...which isn't always a bad idea but somehow Fiona dots the I's and the T's a good bit too hard. Right, luv?
I wish it were so easy.
Easy... or inevitable? It is that easy.
I hate the stupifd floating "A" in the upper right hand corner. What-everr, go back to graphic design.
Look! There is a huge difference in quality and longevity between the De Keyser and a Rea. If I were unable to see this then there is good reason to question just about everything.
All art is good-- as a way of life. Though give me better! We each applaud different ways--and I have to admit I'm a slow clapper--sharp but slow--it's in the blood!!
Bring on some figuration and educate me!
Pantone 433 2X is the new black
"Vulgarity dullness, or impiety will indeed express themselves through art, in brown and grey, as in Rembrandt."
John Ruskin
Its missing a deer.
It's missing Lari Pittman's eyelashes.
I take back what I said ..and you reproduced the wrong painting She best when she goes DARK-- Beautiful Show
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