10/05/2006

Karen Kilimnik

66 comments:

Painter said...

Karen Kilimnik @
303 Gallery
525 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Mark Barry said...

Talented painter, thought the show theme was, well, why?

no-where-man said...

the gentleman whom perports to own the bulk of her work is interesting. never heard "i love rock in roll" and didn't know that it was a run way shot of paris that was in the pruitt leaning on his wall.

youth--less said...

the black margins-top & bottom-kinda make it

Sven said...

I love some of her work (I guess about 1/20th of it I love) but most of the pieces in this show I thought were somewhat weak, especially the washy studies. No-where please elaborate, is that info from an article or 1st hand ?

youth--less said...

btw scarlett j is too dumb to be really sexy--now that snow white...

no-where-man said...

first hand. from his crib full of her work. Im into the pink, prom dress, gilttery, horsey thing - but from more of an "i love rock in roll" side.

arebours said...

In the painting,that is

JD said...

I'm not a fan of these paintings. I find them to be way too "fast;" there's nothing to hold you in them. I guess you could say that they're "about" that speedy look, but to my eye, they read as genuinely shallow.

kelli said...

Sometimes uneven but I remember how truly unusual she was over a decade ago. Those drawings of Kate Moss looked so strange next to Clemente in art magazines. A lot of artists crib from her now including Peyton and I think there is a real tenderness there while Peyton is more wistful and minor.

dubz said...

i really love the way k.k. paints, however i can't get on board with this installation... the ballerinas and such. i know it's a longstanding interest of hers, but the period and pop images in this show don't seem deeply linked. i was getting a hollywood "looks like" vibe. the last show was tougher; more raw and unexpected and a tiny bit creepy and/or fetishy. subjective, sorry.

no-where-man said...

it was a creepy fetishy apartment full of creepy people. i am into the work. there is a genuine level of exploration that i feel lacks in so many vanity shows these days that approximate the "look" of Art.

zipthwung said...

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

I thought the uh tent was gimmicky. Like attaching feathers to your photograph as if its some medicine wheel. Or napoleon to your debutante as if you are a debutante inroducing yourself to high society, but ironicly sniffing arsenic instead of cocaine. Ask yourself why the aristocracy has white hair. Or not. I dont know. But my ideas seem brighter to me, and therefore my star seems more ascendant, delusional, and ultimately immaterial.

Hemingway to your Little Lord Fauntleroy.

I thought the paintings showed more patience, if not skill - who can tell these days what witht he deskilling of america. ANd thus, I found them more engaging. More people should paint small - there are a bunch of shows up where the stroke loses something in scale. Scott Taylor looks good small, for example.

Another problem is the varnish - ask yourself what Vermeer used, and then ask yourself what he uses now.

WHich is to say the paintings had an aristocratic edge, methinks, mixing the naive, as it were, witht he refined, such as it is.

This, one finds, lacking in newbies, rubes, marks and imposters.

Poison!

Desert Island Painter said...

I have always liked her paintings ever since I can remember first seeing them-- in my undergrad years before I knew anything about 'slacker art,' or 'scatter art' installation artists. I found the immediacy, 'quick'ness, idiosynchrasies, and adolescent fixation/adulation apparent in the paintings exciting and inspiring. I have to say I was more than a little bummed later to read that these are regarded (critically and in the artists' own statements and press releases,) as crappy paintings, made with crappy paint, supposedly exhibiting kk's ineptitude with paint. I've always come away from her exhibitions feeling like I could do with less of the installtions and scatterings and would like to see a whole room full of these wonderfully craptastic paintings. same with this one.

zipthwung said...

or as Clive "Enemy to the People" Bell says:

"I do not dream of saying that what they get from art is bad or nugatory; I say that they do not get the best that art can give. I do not say that they cannot understand art; rather I say that they cannot understand the state of mind of those who understand it best. I do not say that art means nothing or little to them; I say they miss its full significance. I do not suggest for one moment that their appreciation of art is a thing to be ashamed of; the majority of the charming and intelligent people with whom I am acquainted appreciate visual art impurely; and, by the way, the appreciation of almost all great writers has been impure. But provided that there be some fraction of pure aesthetic emotion, even a mixed and minor appreciation of art is, I am sure, one of the most valuable things in the world - so valuable, indeed, that in my giddier moments I have been tempted to believe that art might prove the world's salvation.
"

I didnt get that from Kilimnik - more of a "im a placeholder for the ()" kind of thing. Neither aspiring towards mastery nor wallowing in nostalgie pour la boue, she treads the endless quagmire between Paris Hilton and Moscow.

zipthwung said...

If any human being, man, woman, dog, cat or half–crushed worm dares call me “middlebrow” I will take my pen and stab him, dead. Yours etc.,

Virginia Woolf.

youth--less said...

that tenderness may be self-regard. are these paintings in some way avoiding history?

kelli said...

Closeuup I never know if she is for real. The whole outsider story about living in her mom's basement. I think she is like Henri Rousseau: naive and sincere on one level and really cagey on the other. He was sort of an operator actually.
Do you think she is too self reflective and lacking in content? Maybe they are just more fun than Sue Coe so we'd rather look at them. Lazy?

youth--less said...

I don't kno the Klimnick story.

I said self-regarding which doesnt mean a lack of content necessarily. Maybe shes trying to slip the noose of history/time.

What if I found Sue Coe more fun to look at? What if these KK's are as much fun to look at as a face-lift is?

kelli said...

wish Sue Coe would have a comeback.

Sven said...

Please inform me about Sue Coe. I'm unfamiliar with her and my google searches only came up with stuff like this which is desperately lousy or alternately looking like Jorg Immendorf 80s..

kelli said...

This is better. really uneven and a lot of it was ugly. Kind of the antithesis of Kilimnik.
http://terresacree.org/images/eden.jpg

I have 80's political art nostalgia (Martin Wong too) and always want to ask Kalm James for stories about the artists. Sorry Cookie. I know it's bad taste.
Not picking on KK. She is sweet.

Sven said...

that kind of reminds me of Hilary Harkness, though its strange in comparison...is Harkness that much more legit or does it just appear so?

zipthwung said...

Hillary is a good comparison - though it goes into the narcisis ism thing -

Oscar wilde says the artists reflects their personality - (Danto) says art history has ended and that all that is left for art is the sort of micro narrative the individual or small group can construct.

In that light, Napoleon is both a micro-narrative (the personal biography) and the center of the storm (Waterloo). Many artists ride the white horse right? (Leonora Carrington)

Whatever happened to all this season's losers of the year?
Ev'ry time I got to thinking, where'd they disappear?

Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void.
Tomorrow never comes.
Chaos Theory.

poppy said...

i find this way too wishy washy...


Black is Black, give me a heart attack,
let them fall fast and steady...

kelli said...

Cooky maybe HH just has more talent and talent is always good. I've been waiting for a comeback of political art or at least the darker kind of pop art given our times.

no-where-man said...

hot is hot.

is there an i can't post wasted now police?

Sven said...

@ Decay, i was mentioning Hilary in reference to Sue Coe's work

poppy said...

kelli,
you don't need to wait for a comeback,..
just make it come back.
just say here it fuckn comes.. so get ready to eat it!xoxo

poppy said...

nwm,. you must continue to post wasted
ill be stumbling here tomorrow and saturady im sure,
see you at the show.

kelli said...

thanx Poppy. xoxo
Sorry to work the Rousseau comparison but Kilimnik also has his fairytale sense of darkness outside of the sweet light world she constructs.

poppy said...

who is policing this joint and why?
haven't read all comments so i'm being lazy..

kelli said...

Decay do you mean in the way genre/portrait paintings reflect their times or in the fairytale darkness way or both?

no-where-man said...

poppy? u will 4 real? come on up, did i c u 2nite - i will know u when u say "poppy".

over all seems kinda dismal, some new blood i say some new blood.

no-where-man said...
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youth--less said...

yawn- you're more ageist than kelli ;)

kelli said...

I always post with my name and I stand behind my beliefs. I have been accused of being Edna and she thinks that is funny because we disagree a lot. And I do have a life. I am painting some boring clouds,eating some soup and I like some of the people here including you Closeuup.

kelli said...

And I've learned to respect your opinions. I think some images offend you in a personal and deeply felt way and I have to respect that.

youth--less said...

DeKay Image's reading is very illuminating. The intent of KK's style can be confusing.

kelli said...

She was a major, major artist. Like Frank Moore and others she made art about the AIDS crisis ( before there were any drugs) and other social issues. They have all been undervalued but she is particurally forgotten by recent memory for the obvious reason. So is Ida Applebroog.

kelli said...

True but we need a kollewitz. I'm not picking on Kilimnik or Peyton. I'm just saying it can't be all sweetness and beauty.

jpegCritic said...

sue coe's a little heavy-handed next to applebroog.
coe being an obvious descendant to kollwitz, i didn't
mind the heavy handedness at the time (the 80's).
Bad painting and heavy handedness was in at the time.

But then followed the 90's which seemed to convince
us that we should try to sort out for ourselves, what was
meant by 'agencies of social change'. The playing of
provocative imagery was too propagandizing.
and so agitprop was low on the playlist. Coe's paintings
couldn't hold, probably cuz there was nothing more
to offer. I know that sounds harsh.

Not to say that Coe was strictly agitprop -- of the
kind adbusters was. Though I remember being shocked
and bewildered when the pool-table painting made
it to my school's gallery. The image has never left
me. Like the image of adbuster's pigs. I remember
applebroog as being able to grasp some tender moments.
A bewildering breadth.

In so far as breadth is always bewildering.

Which is why i find kk charming.

jpegCritic said...

i like how kk fucked up sj's lip like that.
only an artist can do something like that...
to take the most beautiful thing and revv
it up into the grotesque -- without knowing
it, probably.

jpegCritic said...

so how 'bout lucy mckenzie and paulina olowska
in relationship to kilimnik?

haven't really thought about it., though
i sense some relationship.... (?)

i know that m and o have collaborated on projects.
can I see k joining in for a threesome?

jpegCritic said...

oh i think i can force a relation--
olowska speaks of fashion and beauty
as a force of abstraction upon women
in a literal way. McKenzie speaks of
power thru authority thru popularity,
which of course transposes itself
upon the vulnerable position of girlhood.

And so Kilimnik's version of girlhood ponders this
dilemma, like the 'girl with the groutesque lip'
above. Of the power of -- what -- artistry as
celebrity? Of course the main draw of this painting
is that Scarlett herself (or at least her image),
while she and her fucked up lip stares dumbfounded
at the personage of Vermeer who remains
absent and outside the frame --

nah.

I like how kk painted this as if it were a robert henri.

we all know robert henri was a murderer.

jpegCritic said...

breadth.
so dumbfoundingly bewildering.

jpegCritic said...

TheTruthMovement said...

"we all know robert henri was a murderer."

And so it is with the hegemony of the artist.
cellini, henri, and now, psychically, vermeer.

jpegCritic said...

well at least cinematographically.

jeff said...

Robert Henri was a murderer?

How so?

jeff said...
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jeff said...
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jeff said...

The son of a riverboat gambler, Robert Henri was born Robert Henry Cozad in 1865 and grew up in the small town of Cozad, Nebraska, which his father had founded. After his father killed a man and fled to avoid arrest for murder, the various members of the family took different names to avoid identification. Robert assumed the name of Robert Henri.

The family resettled in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and shortly afterwards, in 1886, having decided to become a painter, Henri enrolled in the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. From 1886 to 1900, Henri alternated his time between Paris and Philadelphia, making three trips to Paris and working in Philadelphia in the intervening periods.

jeff said...

Scott,
Henri, Belllows, and Duveneck are products of the late 19 century and ealry 20th.

They could draw and had exccellent training in all aspects of painting from life.

Peyton, and Karen Kilimnik are not trying in my view to do what they did.

If they are they are pretty bad at it.

I'm not sure its fair to compair them as Peyton's and Kilimnik's lack of drawing and painting skills are no better than second rate ameture painters from Henri, Belllows, and Duveneck's era.

jeff said...

Just because they paint people does not mean they can paint people...

youth--less said...

What about all the goofy highlights in this painting. Joke, right?

zipthwung said...

yeah, same witht he house (tell me what painting that references)

decay- "I was thinking about David and his relationship to the way he became the official court painter for Napoleon"

did I get it?

I never can tell cuz I didnt know right off the bat that painting was sj - but I did know "bee stung lips" and "collagen injection" "botox"- Im shallow but I dont know the celebs that well.

Ida applebroog brings up bad memeories of heavy handed gallery shows of a crisis I didnt create and a system I wanted to fight but was more worried about my own self preservation and personal glory.

So I joined the antifacist anarchists and put well documented sand in the tanks of many a logging truck. So I went to art school and drew my inner homunculous. SO I drank myself to death in the whitehorse bar. So I made millions on insider trading. So I memorized the names and biographies of enlightenment project artists. So I went to painters NYC an got a gallery show and became a petit bourgoise. You dont know. No you dont.

jpegCritic said...

Painterdog, i stand corrected.

But as for painting ability, I think
you overvalue the ability of henri and bellows..
(Duveneck, well that's another story.)

jeff said...

Henri is not my favorite from that period. But he was a good painter.

The contex was in comparison to Peyton, and Kilimnik, so compaired to them...

Bellow's early boxing paintings are real good.

And the lower eastside paintings are pretty good as well.

no-where-man said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
no-where-man said...

i think there is a creeptastic sincerity

jpegCritic said...

Bellows just got lazier as he became more of a family man.
Ever see his paintings of his daughters? Quite Lazy, and
worse than this. His boxing paintings were immense.

jeff said...

yeah the family paintings are strange.

I do like his Maine landscapes, some of them are real strange, the colors are out there.

Did you know he died of peritonitis from appendicitis, very painful

zipthwung said...

radha

jeff said...

Maybe there's to much. Maybe there are to many people trying to make art, pushed out of all these institutions and some of them just don't have good ideas, or the technique to follow through. Maybe your bored with art, need a rest.

I'm with you thunderpal, I have not seen the show, but I know the feeling of walking onto a gallery and thinking the same thing.

It's only a temporary condition. It can be cured by going up town to the Met and looking a Rembrandt. That cures all my problems with pomo anxiety.

JD said...

Y'know, Thunderpal, I'm 100% with you. This is vapid, silly, adolescent bad painting. I have no idea what people see in this work; not at all.

heidi said...

painters like this encourage people to go to art school because it gives the impression that anyone can have a show if you have the art spirit. Okay I'll try to be constructive, I just don't get a real substantial feeling from it. And the execution is, oh I just want more. I saw this show and I felt like i was browsing in K-mart, left no impression. I don't know her earlier work though. I just don't get it man.