'Digitally Derived': cartoons as high art
Friday, June 06, 2003 - A
trip to the East End this month might feel more like a visit to West Chelsea,
thanks to "Digitally Derived: Fine Art in the Age of the 'Toon',"
now through June 21 at Michael Berger's new space at 6022 Penn Circle South.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, whose hodgepodge "galleries"
often clutter and confuse, Berger anchors his interests in contemporary, two-dimensional
works from high-caliber, international artists. Berger is credited with a
major Pittsburgh showing of Warhol prints
nearly two decades before The Andy Warhol Museum opened on the North Side.
"Digitally Derived" does not disappoint with a contemporary
focus on four artists: one grandmaster of Pop and three strong international
artists hailing from art's "new" capitals: London and Los Angeles.
Linked by stylistic affinity to the high-low art of comics/cartoons,
"Digitally Derived" presents four distinct artists signaling "now."
Roy Lichtenstein art-historically
paves the way for the contemporary three. Lichtenstein is known for initiating
the American Pop movement, an aesthetic and cultural effort that was so powerful
that it would eventually lead to an eclipse of traditional Modernism.
Lichtenstein saw in the everyday, popular culture materials
(advertisements, comics, television) the medium for fine art. His mid-century
works shocked critics and the reigning avant-garde.
Lichtenstein's images appropriate, almost
directly, from serial comics. Subjects are composed
of flat, bold color fields, with black outlines, and
often incorporate the benday dots of rotogravure printing.
"Oval
Office" (1992) depicts the esteemed seat
of world power in comic book fashion. Looking as
though the Power Puff Girls will suddenly break through
the ceiling anticipating an order to vanquish a Townsville
villain, "Oval Office's" silly portrayal
of the serious might even stir the blindly right
in today's political arena.
Walking through doors that Lichtenstein
opened are Carl
Fudge, Julian
Opie and Monique
Prieto. All three artists internalize the "cartoon
as high art" idea but approach it distinctly.
Fudge's hybrid of digital technology
and meticulous handwork generates sensational results.
Insect-like semi-patterns pulsate like visual sound
across a colorful mainframe in "Rhapsody
Spray Suite" (2000), exhibited last year in
New York at the Whitney Museum's technology exhibition "Bitstream."
The "Mobile
Scout I" screenprint
series equally wows. Tudor inspired patterning abstracts
a sci-fi arcade quest game; bold colors suggest a
severe tone, contrasting the softer palette of "Rhapsody."
Downstairs, Opie's "Eight
Landscapes" (2000) offer up an elegant severity
-- serene isolation. Acknowledging the design confluence
of the 1990s, Opie's illustrative style is cool,
often commercially savvy. He teeters on the line
between real and contrived, "generic and specific."
Opie confides (in a 26-minute video documentary)
he is interested in places such as Lego Land, Euro
Disney and video game worlds. These places contain
constructed environments attempting to duplicate reality.
Opie's interests lie in the discrepancy apparent when
the contrived construct fails to accurately duplicate
the "real."
"Landscapes" digitally
paints eight scenes that at first look real, but
after some time stretch into the surreal. Contradictions
arise: The viewer is at once drawn to the innocence
of the slick, cartoon-like rendering, yet something
is tweaked. The viewer is finally pushed back from
the action, which is only anticipated, never realized,
save for sound allusions in the work's titles: "cowbells
tractor silence," "voices
footsteps telephones," "rain
footsteps siren."
The dichotomy of contradiction
is also an element in Prieto's smaller prints. Solid
silhouettes of color relay a half-organic, half-machine
spirit. Color forms carry weight, yet are light on
the paper. Characters appear as the prints evolve
into animation cells abstracted. Grotesque shapes
are balanced by both their narrative relationships
and by their solid, vibrant coloring.
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