Envision a horde of gestural abstract expressionists storming the National Portrait Gallery, or a civil war erupting between the east and west wings of the National Gallery of Art, and you’ll have some idea of Ian Whitmore’s painting. The artist makes breezy representational works with an eye fixed on the history of art and then stresses them—threatens them, frankly—with bombastic abstraction. Elaborating on this technique, which he introduced in his March solo debut last year, Ian Whitmore extends the scope of his hybrid painting style with the sold-out “Mirror Mirror” show at Fusebox in DC.
While the conflicts on his canvases range from detente to total war, the temperament of “Mirror Mirror” never strays from playful, as Whitmore’s dry-as-ice humor, plain intellect, and attractive palette cool the violence; the results are smart and satisfying. In merging representational and abstract painting, Whitmore borrows from the themes and histories incumbent to each school. The works are dramatized by another conceit: each piece in “Mirror Mirror” bears a formal or narrative correspondence with another work. The allusion count, accordingly, is high, but it’s a testament to the levels of wit at play that viewers with different art historical educations will find and enjoy different connections.
That wit derives from Whitmore’s curatorial sense of source selection. He obliges the subject of Westernized, which is nominally a portrait of an 18th century gentleman, with an admiring grace, the effect being an authentic-sounding statement of noblesse oblige. The painting is, in fact, a reading of Tom Jones—not the 1749 novel but the randy 1963 film adaptation starring Albert Finney. The dandy way that the rococo 1960s revived the Rococo of the 1700s seems all the more foppish when presented in a stern, purse-lipped, heroic portrait such as Whitmore provides in Westernized. (In other words, what exactly do you get with a serious portrait of the Scarlet Pimpernel?) And all these redirections take place while Whitmore’s abstract brush corrodes whatever integrity the viewer chooses to invest in the portrait itself. Each transaction indicts the artist as a serial manipulator, refracting his sources with alternating lenses of earnest appeal and kitschy fascination.
Ian Whitmore, Westernized, 2004. Oil on linen.
With “Mirror Mirror,” Whitmore introduces several strategies that ought to appease those who see too much of Cecily Brown in Whitmore’s now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t abstract brushstroke. Impasto marks Toiler and Stand-in; in Woodsy, 60s fashion iconography are revealed to varying degrees against pastoral imagery stained directly onto the canvas—staining being a Washington, DC signature. In a further nod to his Color School forebears, Whitmore employs ungessoed canvases and Gene Davis–style stripes throughout the show. But better than all these tactical variations, the artist knows how to scale his effects. My favorite moment in the show comes in a painting titled Bridge, in the form of an uncontroversial series of small, neon graffiti horses stamped across what looks to be the tunic of a Breton girl (a thematic figure in art history). With these stamped marks and a few stray dollops of paint, Whitmore invalidates the painting’s pretensions to portraiture. Just a spattering of incongruous marks exposes an otherwise whole and accurate depiction. That’s the challenge for the viewer—to accept Whitmore’s premise of content giving way to form, representation receding before a coherent, total approach to surface value.
Two instances in the show vary from Whitmore’s larger body of work. Though in other senses a typical example of Whitmore’s style, the whirligig boudoir scene of Belletriste is pocked by several tiny alphabetical symbols. The letters, signs in themselves, wander from Whitmore’s visual vocabulary to Rauschenberg realms of collage. In Death From Above, viewers are greeted with the pitiful vision of a dead cartoon bird, seemingly struck right from Snow White’s shoulder and cast to the floor of an Albert Pinkham Ryder forest. The Pop incongruity between the painterly olive drab of the forest and animation tones of the bird signals a departure from the primarily Easter-hued palette that has characterized his work so far. Not wholly consistent with the feel of the rest of the show, but evidence that Whitmore can concentrate on one theme without exhausting himself.
Ian Whitmore, Belletriste, 2004. Oil on linen.
Pox, a multi-paneled meditation on Christian eschatological painting, commands central attention. The most narrative piece in the room, Pox features themes and figures (and a display) drafted from Baroque frescoes, but muted so that the action only vaguely resembles any given apocalypse. The pastiche of these vague actors and gestures, recognizable from so many modes of Christian calamity painting, combines with a contemporary abstract brushstroke that augments the ecstasy and fever of the tradition Whitmore cites—and as with the rest of his work, it’s the act of synthesis that’s so irresistible.
Ian Whitmore, Pox, 2004. Oil on linen mounted on four panels.
Pox (detail)
[On view until February 19 at Fusebox (1412 14th St NW, Wash DC). All images courtesy Fusebox.]
Posted by Kriston at February 10, 2005 10:51 AMThanks for the link! :-)
Posted by: Tyler Green at February 10, 2005 1:15 PMI would like to see the show in its entirety. It seems that the incorporation of this sort of gestural abstraction could also be interpreted more as an endgame maneuver to justify painting representationally. It's like he's throwing the blobs of paint on there to excuse himself from table.
Though, I like the images here (sexy looking stuff), I have to say Inka Essenhigh offers a more interesting synthesis between the abstract, the historical, and pop. At least in her earlier work- the newer stuff is a little schmaltzy.
Posted by: R™ at February 10, 2005 2:04 PMGreat review Kriston. I saw the show and wish Whitmore much success. He seemed like a nice fellow. Regarding Pox, the combination of pink splotches and scarlet red was a little hard for me to digest, but all in all it's a really captivating piece. Like you said "smart and satisfying."
Posted by: fnook at February 10, 2005 5:05 PMSuperb review...
Posted by: Lenny at February 10, 2005 7:30 PMTasteful-looking stuff
Posted by: Dick Puddings at February 10, 2005 11:20 PMExcept that, well, to this untrained eye, someone broke into the gallery and spray painted the works. That's what it looks like to me.
Posted by: j.scott barnard at February 11, 2005 12:01 PMI don't mean "tasteful-looking" to be a compliment. It is a way of saying the work is servile in its calculated eagerness to please those in search of theory-driven, innocuous, art-schoolish art.
Posted by: Dick Puddings at February 11, 2005 8:01 PMI wish you could get some more of the jpgs up, Kriston. It was an incredibly impressive show, and supremely exciting even to an art novice like me. I'm sorry the previous commenter doesn't get the same enjoyment, but such is life. I don't really know enough to say if the paintings are "theory-driven," whatever that means, but I will say that even without any theory knowledge, I found them thoroughly impressive on a pure aesthetic level, and interesting to boot. Definitely worth a look, any of you in DC.
Posted by: susan at February 11, 2005 10:00 PMI should not be so negative, especially not haveing seen the work in person. And it is easy to be negative. The images certainly are pleasing to the eye. I will shut up now.
Posted by: Dick Puddings at February 11, 2005 11:24 PMI'm going to try again to get more JPGs up, but I have some issues with my host company that I need to resolve, I think. Apparently I only have so much server memory for traffic, and the site's already used up 90 percent of that memory for February. I don't know whether the problems are related, but then I didn't know memory had anything to do with traffic. They could tell me that my goldfish are out of spoons and they'd get the same ah, I see, of course nod from me.
Posted by: Kriston at February 12, 2005 2:10 AMWow, those are fantastic.
Posted by: bitchphd at February 13, 2005 1:18 AMCuriosity officially peaked. Thanks for the review Kriston. How big is this work? Are the gestures viceral (ala De Kooning)or mannered (ala Richter?) It is kind of hard to tell from the pics.
Posted by: rebecca at February 13, 2005 1:21 PMrebecca: The works are sized from about 2 to 3 feet or so. Some are smaller; I don't think any are larger than 4 feet in either dimension.
As for the gesture, it seems to me that his brushstroke is used to different effects in different pieces, but I would use "mannered" before I used "visceral." I think wherever you want to fit Cecily Brown along that de Kooning—Richter axis is about where Whitmore ought to be.
Posted by: Kriston at February 14, 2005 2:35 PMI keep going back and forth on this stuff. The first set of pictures looked unimpressive. The portrait and the warrior guy in Pox seemed illustrated instead of really painted --just glib. Then the images added day or two ago really helped me see what this guy was up to. More commanding. But, now, knowing the sizes are so small (compared to the works they historically reference) disappoints me. They come off as merely clever, not full works of art. Am I way off base?
Posted by: Dick Puddings at February 15, 2005 10:20 AMI guess Dick, that would depend on what you consider to constitute a "work of art". Does the fact that Whitmore's paintings reference art history necessarily require that he be limited to the specific characteristics of one particular genre? From what I can tell, the work seems to be informed by a variety of sources, so to state that it is not representative of what it connotes seems pointless.
Posted by: Mary at February 15, 2005 11:04 AMThere are more pics? Scuse me if I am being thick but I am only seeing three "Westernized," "Belletriste," and "Pox." Am I missing a link or something?
As far as the scale is concerned, it wouldn't always make a difference but it could certainly nuance the work from somewhere near Cecily Brown's camp closer to the camp of someone like Delia Brown who’s show a couple of years ago at Margo Leavin in LA used gesture like you might use quotation marks, a sort of "insert gesture reference here" kind of thing. I sense the more visceral (best word I can come to at the moment) gesture as synthesizing many things including historical critique as well as formal device while "mannered" gesture might limit itself to a theory centric anti-painting didacticism.
This is articulated well --the "'mannered' gesture might limit itself to a theory-centric, anti-painting didacticism." Yet the scale is important too. Being much smaller than the grand-narratives, Victorian portraiture, and abstractionist works entailed, the smallish scale seems disappointing (or limiting). I would say it is disappointing in the same way the "realist" sections of his work are glibly painted (detail of Pox). John Currin's art history riffs seem more satisfying because the works are really painted, forcing the conceptual tension. Here, no tension. It's all Sweet-Tarts.
No doubt, Whitmore is talented and worth watching. Not going to argue that.
Posted by: Dick Puddings at February 15, 2005 9:07 PMso are you , dick puddings. so are you! anyway. can't wait to see whitmore's painting in person. it reminds me of my relationship with laura owens, which has been off and on for, like, what, over a year? we've broken up, gotten back together, broken up again. almost just dropped $2500 for a freaking aquatint! and i still haven't seen a single one of her untitled works in actual person. anyway. i was done with john currin the minute i saw him. i think with ian, i will take it slow. couple of drinks, little light conversation. certainly something before i drop the change. naw, i'm just kidding. tell me where to buy? i want in.
Posted by: Cold Bacon at February 25, 2005 4:54 PMA great resource - many thanks!
Posted by: Mike at January 5, 2009 12:48 AM