Modern Painters

The Goo of PaintHow every mark mattersBY JENNIFER COATES``````JASON STOPA``````represented a wide array of phenomenaRYHUWKHFHQWXULHV³OLJKWÁHVKZHDWKHU³and the way it’s wielded can both augmentand undermine the subjects it depicts.The artists I discuss here all exploit thereferential potential of the painterlygesture, revealing how elastic paint canbecome in the service of meaning.Nicole Eisenman’s work in the midaughts underwent a transformation thatwas roughly contemporaneous with therise of Schutz. Eisenman’s style openedup; while her canvases still had a socio-political bite, they were also more about adirect celebration of and immersion inpaint itself. Consider Little Shaver, 2005:The shaving-cream-coated face of a manis encroached upon by a woman who leansin to kiss him and nick him in the neck.$WLQ\LQWHUORSHUÀJXUHVTXDWVRQWKHman’s head, peeing rudely on his ear. Theshavee’s visage is itself like the surface of``````WHEN I FIRST saw Dana Schutz’s Sneeze,2001, I felt liberated, excited aboutpainting’s potential; she played with themedium’s history without being seriousor chilly. Schutz skillfully merged thecomplex genre of the portrait with AbstractExpressionism, all via the germ-expelling,body-shaking experience of a commonsneeze. It was as if Willem de Kooning’sWomanZDVXSGDWHGDQGFULWLTXHGthrough an irrepressible allergic reaction.At the time, I had just read MiraSchor’s seminal essay “Figure/Ground”and recalled the feminist, painterly battlecry to acknowledge the bodily, the gooof paint, in any accounting of art history.Schor cemented my belief that paintingis not a disadvantaged relation to themain narrative of recent art history but,rather, a malleable, powerful way toUHÁHFWFXOWXUHDQGFRQVFLRXVQHVV3DLQWis an alchemical shape-shifter that has``````a painting: The cream, the blood, and thepee are the pigment, while the small imp’svagina and the razor, wielded by women,are the implements that stain, groom, andwound the implacable protagonist. Inshort: The woman is the painter; the man,the canvas. The composition recalls JudithSlaying HolofernesVSHFLÀFDOO\WKHHDUO\1600s version by Artemisia Gentileschi,in which Judith’s handy knife work bringsviolent red spurts from her male victim’sneck. Female revenge culminates in bloodyribbons; both the man and the pictureEUHDNGRZQLQWRYLVFRXVOLTXLGAngela Dufresne has likewise beenLQÁXHQFHGE\WKH*HQWLOHVFKLKRUURUVKRZShe deploys wild and loose brushworkthat often breaks free of its purely descrip-tive duties in order to behave just like pee,ejaculate, or blood, working in the mightytradition of dismantling the picture andthe patriarchy. In her painting Death ofSilence, or Jean-Louis Trintignant, 2013,the decapitated head of a man rests in apool of blood; red spatters cover his face andthe white sheet beneath him. For Dufresne,depicting violence becomes an opportunityto play with her materials. The connectionbetween murder and painting might be adeep one: The bloody remains on ancientVDFULÀFLDOVWRQHVODEVFRXOGEHXQGHUVWRRGas the earliest Abstract ExpressionistSDLQWLQJV3HRSOHZHUHQ·WMXVWVODXJKWHUHG³their remains were sprayed within theFRQÀQHVRIDVDFUHGUHFWDQJOH$WWHQWLRQmust have been paid to the aestheticGLVWULEXWLRQRIJRRH\LQQDUGVRQDÁDWsurface. (Vienna Actionist Hermann Nitschmade this connection between ritual killingand painting with his immersive orgiasticperformances involving dead animals,HQWUDLOVDQGERGLO\ÁXLGVDQGODUJHVFDOHSDLQWLQJVVSODWWHUHGZLWKUHGVDQGEURZQV3DLQWFRQQHFWVHDVLO\WRWKHFRUSRUHDO2IFRXUVH-DFNVRQ3ROORFNWXUQHGSDLQW·Vpropensity to unspool in wet skeins into aheroic and physical event, with chaoticgestures that changed the understandingof what a painting could be. But actionpainting has a centuries-old predecessorin Fra Angelico’s faux marble panelsthat are situated below the Madonnaof Shadows at the San Marco monasteryON CRAFT // JENNIFER COATES54 MODERN PAINTERS JUNE/JULY 2016BLOUINARTINFO.COM