Art review: Nicole Eisenman, 'New Paintings' at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects

Nicole Eisenman did not invent Cartoon Primitivism. But she’s at the head of this class of painting, which combines the accessibility of cartoons with the meatiness of simplified forms and vigorously smeared pigments. Her 12 paintings at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects cover an impressive range of territory, sometimes skimming too quickly over depths that should be dived into and at others fearlessly belly-flopping into the muck, where nothing is pure, high-minded or stuffy — and all the better for it.

Eisenman’s paintings fall into three groups: solo portraits, kissing couples and multi-figure scenarios.

At approximately 6-by-5 feet, the “Large Heads” are not the biggest pictures. But they contain the most largely scaled faces. These crudely rendered figures are derived from ancient icons, amped-up graphics and African artifacts, by way of Picasso. Think Guston meets Haring, the existential dread of the former countered by the giddy zing of the latter.

Eisenman’s kissing couples stir Chagall, Renoir and Klimt into the mix, along with Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen and Jim Lutes. This makes for a volatile cocktail that is deliciously distasteful, both attractive and repulsive.

The largest canvases, “Tea Party” and “The Drawing Class,” along with the slightly smaller “Séance,” are Eisenman’s most compositionally adventuresome and narratively complex. Their ham-fisted paint-handling is spot-on. It sets scenes at once ordinary and out of whack.

That’s Eisenman’s MO — making familiar situations alien, simultaneously accessible and off-putting, troublesome and irresistible.

-- David Pagel

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, 6006 Washington Blvd., Culver City, (310) 837-2117, through June 11. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.vielmetter.com

Image: Nicole Eisenman, "Large Head 2." Credit: Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects

Comments

[sande]

Analysis of the first paragraph:
1. "Nicole Eisenman did not invent Cartoon Primitivism. But she’s at the head of this class of painting..." Comment: are you thinking of school?
2. "...which combines the accessibility of cartoons with the meatiness of simplified forms and vigorously smeared pigments." Comment: who said cartoons are accessible--do you mean usually under-analyzed because "accessible" means"well known," i.e. in one's face?
3. "Meatiness": usually, you use the word "juicy." Comment: "meatiness" here means "vigorously smeared." Not painted? What are you saying?
4. "...fearlessly belly-flopping into the muck, where nothing is pure, high-minded or stuffy — and all the better for it." You give her work the thematic of Russian literary formalism: "make the familiar strange." But how does her work do this as "belly-flopping"? You make her sound like a faux-populist, flipping the bird at the masters, not an artist who might be trying to say something neither the masters nor the slaves (and their permutations) want to hear.
All in all, a sloppy review

[Earth angel]

And Sande should know. She is a world-class pedant.

[william wray]

The artist has a (inconsistent) strength for color, but overall she feels a little bit lost to me, smashing so many cultures of painting style together to try and find her way. I can’t put her on the top of the list of Cartoon primitives because I’m not sure if that’s what she is. I see no Klimt, but do see a kind of rough and ready insertion of impressionism poured through a Picasso tribal aesthetic. The gluing of the photos source material feels like and apology to me for that cultural strip mining. In the end it’s hard to tell if this is just a kind of parody of different art styles vs. true personal expression.
With out sarcasm I believe the art world responds to an artist when they hide their strengths with their weaknesses. I can’t tell if this is the case here or the artist just needs to develop more. I hope the artist coalesces into a more consistent original approach, which can happen from more seasoning and disciplined study.

[Donald Frazell]

What happened to WWs excellent review/reply on here? It was not derogatory, but a true critique, which we dont have in this 'story".

art collegia delenda est

[william wray]

Donald:

I can be pretty tart in my letters so I really tried to tone it down in my last note, but I guess I unforgivably crossed the line before or I just plain intimate people. I find it ironic that art critics embrace censorship when many of their stories are about it. Charles Knight who I've been pretty tough on can take it, I've come to respect him for that.

[Donald Frazell]

Its back, though not the one I wrote earlier which also questioned the typical name dropping by careerist "critics". Klimt, Chagall and Renoir lumped together with three nobodies? LOL!

Hope all have a wonderful Mothers Day. You too Cate.

[william wray]

Hey look at that . We can all get along. Thank you.

[an actual participant]

Maybe you people should actually visit the galleries instead of trolling around on the LATimes Comments section. There is an actual world outside that you might be missing. I find it sad that you people spend all this time talking about the article but never go see ACTUAL art. Being critical of art criticism is one thing, but sitting on the sidelines claiming to be experts of someone else's work is another, especially if it's based on just the one picture in a given article. If half of the time you spent spamming the comments section was directed towards going to actual galleries, I think everyone would benefit.

[william wray]

Dear AP,

I think you would benefit from using your real name. Anonymity makes it easy to judge and snipe. You might get a boost of empowerment that come for truly standing by your convictions if you live in truth. But guess what? I agree with you. You can only truly judge great art in person.
However, I go to a lot of shows and usually find that work I was on the fence about (digitally) I can go either way. Work I clearly like on line, I usually like better in person. Work that I don't care for, I rarely like in person. I think in this case I'm on the fence and if I catch the show I may like it more that what I see online. That is why if you read my comments I kept my observations very general as I'm well aware I can't judge the subtly.

[Donald Frazell]

You ar eright, there is a real world out here. Something the artscene avoids at all costs, as then it would be forced to be relevant to humanity, and not just a decadent treaty for the effette.

I see perhaps six interesting things a year here, most is just part of the museo/academic/gallery complex of fleecing money from students and their parents. Get a MFA, for untold thousands of dollars, and you do can have a meaningless vanity show in some self absorbed gallery owners temple to himslf. its businewss, and amazingly successful.

just irrelevant to what Creative art is, quality will show through on a website, if you need to seek that hard in perosn to find even a tiny morself of truth, it aint exactly worth my time. And my life is kinda important to me anyway, gotta play the odds. This aint good ones, better shot playing Lotto.

art collegia delenda est

[Crystal]

Notice Frazell's scam? He starts his reply by feigning agreement with "an actual participant's" suggestion that he actually go and see the art he blathers about endlessly: "You are right, there is a real world out there."

Then, he blathers on again without ever confessing that he actually DOESN'T see the art he spams. Such a fraud. At least Wray admits it!

[Donald Frazell]

I admit quite freely I go when worth it. As WW said, you can see if it is worth checking out or not, no scam at all, thats called sarcasm honey.
When interesting I go, have taken co workers with me and kids on tours of LACMA, who laugh like mad at contempt art.

[an actual participant]

@ Don.

The artists you spam about are real people who probably aren't full of contempt, though they are contemporary. The art world is not some OTHER place where everyone tries to keep out the little guy. It's a place where everyone can participate on many different levels. It's really sad to see that sarcasm and contempt are how you choose to participate.

Like I said before, it's one thing to criticize criticism, but to call the artists living and working today (in LA and abroad) 'contempt' artists is really inappropriate and inaccurate.

It's fine if you don't like the work that you actually go out and see but to sit at your computer and troll on the comments section really just makes you look cynical. I'm sure you don't care how you look to other people, but most bullies don't.

I challenge you to actually praise work you LIKE instead of just sneering and spamming on other people's accomplishments.

[Donald Frazell]

Again, those who go anonymously get no cred. And art lives in gilded gheotos, those isolated from the real world. True creative art doesnt, but that is always in short supply, while the supply siders at art schools are more than happy to sell you that piece of paper telling everyone you are an artistes. Sorta like in the Wizard of oz.

When I see good work on here i say so, and have. But the bar has been lowered so far as to make the word "art" meaningless. for it lacks any definition now, to the benefit of the art complex in taking in money from naive children. The art scene has been created by its benefactors, the very rich destroying the middle class who desire to defang art and make it a lap puppy, and have been incredibly successful at it.

art can never be made from inside the belly of the beast, and nobody could be more inside its intestines than artistes. Few great artists have ever graduated from an academy, or ever will. the few exceptioson prove the rule, and tqkes years to get the pablum out of their system.

when you mature enough to have a real name, come back and we can talk. in the meantime, I wil get my VAS updates and delete away, happy i am not missing anything, but sad there is so little to look forward to seeing. Seems like the Fowler gets more of my money than any other place these days.

[Crystal]

See? "an actual participant" nails it -- using the apt word "troll" for Frazell -- and he blathers on endlessly yet again without ever even addressing the corruption of criticizing art he has never seen.

"When I see good work on here i say so," he blathers, not even understanding that such a statement is just an example of the problem. Seeing work "on here" is not seeing work at all, just sitting on his lazy backside, letting his fingers do the walking and, uh, trolling on-line reproductions. Poor thang.

Oh, and "honey"? Your sexism is showing. Again.

[an actual participant]

This wasn't ever about art schools or the crazy elitist collectors, it was about being polite in a public forum.

But you will always have a come-back or snide remark about people you don't know but claim to know everything about.

Even someone posting anonymously is mature enough not to argue with the ignorant.

You win.

Keep on spamming, nobody is gonna stop you.

[Donald Frazell]

No one has tried, because you have never given a reason except that you dont like to hear truth. i see art all the time, my mother was an artist and grew up in it. So have a high bar, and this doesnt come anywhere near rising to it. Both William and I ar artists, we put our money and names where our mouths are. You dont't thats the point. Click our names and hate or not, we put up, so dont have to shut up.

Time is short, articles like this, as poorly write as they are as Sande Cohen has pointed out, an art school critical thinking teacher for 30 years, and VAS show works in local galleries so we can pick and choose what to go to, there are literally hundreds. The articles provide gallery link,s both WW and i do check them out before writing, and look at the work. It aint highly skilled and painterly, and look like they have no sense of scale. Which is certainly unknown today where bigger is "better". More like bombastic. Real artists live in the real world, always have, always will, not in art colonies that are more Disneyland than veritas. We got work to do and people to love and care for, life is precious, I am not wasting it on childrens therapy and games in vanity galleries.

When something look of interest, I often do go. Ifr not, not. If you cant tell from this you are no artist, William gave a very good reason why, and it holds. Your arguments dont. We dont alwyass agree, but when not more about degree raaather than if it has substance. little does, and we must aim much higher. And not make for ourselves, but everyday justify our existence, find purpose in what we do. If you look in the mirror and it is all about you, well, find a new field. We have been inundated with narcissists for far too long.

art collegia delenda est
Fine art colleges must be destroyed

Save the colorful and soulful watts Towers9Nuestro Pueblo), tear down the drab and lifeless Ivories.

[Forrest Turman]

Bla Bla Bla.. Why is no one writing about the paintings in question? I saw the show and thought Nicole Eisenman makes art about nothing. The paintings in question are of no importance and they never will be. Bad Painting had its day back in the late 70's and early 80's, but it is now a tired convention with no gas left in the tank.

To the art school comments; Art schools are big business. That's why there popping up on every university campus from here to New York. In any MFA program you will find two maybe three students who are the real thing, the rest will just fad away. It doesn't take a genius to understand that getting an MFA doesn't make one an artist, because artist aren't made they happen despite societies attempts to crush creative and free will.

[Donald Frazell]

Actually, William Wray wrote an excellent review of the work above. And as he is a successful cartoonist as well as artist, he knows the two have different purposes and so forms.
But you are right on point FT. There were a few with some ability in NeoEx, like Clemente, but only Kiefer turned out to be a great artist. Perhaps the only one around today, though his new virtines are rather bland, he is kinda old now.

[Francesco Sinibaldi]

The wind blowing in the sun.

In the chirping
of a delicate
bird there's a
light that always
shines near
the sound of
a quietness, it's
the tender relief
now recalling
the youth.

Francesco Sinibaldi