Tuesday, February 24, 2009

A2 - Maria Lassnig


Maria Lassnig is a 90 year old woman living in Austria. I found her by searching the front page of Art in America, one of my favorite art magazines (Artforum is also a good place to look). While I am on the searching tangent, look at contemporary art museums as well. The museums will have good resources and you can search their exhibitions.

Okay, back to the artwork. Without more than a few moments spent with her artwork it is obvious Lassnig's work is about the human form. The first thing that came to my mind was Lucian Freuid's work, back to that later.


Maria Lassnig, Melonenesser, 1985

Application of Wolfflin:

Painterly: Okay, pretty much anything after Renaissance painting other than Mondrian is going to be painterly. Blended, no specific lines.

Planar & Closed: I am going to go out on a limb and say planar and closed. As we get into contemporary work many of the Polarities will become conceptual. Conceptually its piece is all about devouring the watermelon - nothing outside maters. To take one step back to the technical analysis of this piece, nothing structurally is pointing outside of the painting. The lines of the figure point towards that slice of watermelon (cheek lines, hands, arms, etc.).

Unity: You cannot separate the fragments.

Relative Clarity: Today, I am going with the simple definition of the idea that the subject is simply consuming a watermelon.

You or Me, 2005

Here is an interview with Lassnig about this piece and her current work, click here.

Painterly, very open (gun pointing at the viewer), recessional for the same reason, unity and relative clarity.

The World Destroyer

Here is an article about this piece, click.

I love that she is 90 and still working. From the quick glance I have had she reminds me of Georgia O'Keeffe but more comfortable with herself because she has the guts to paint more than just a copy of nature - she takes it a step further. She takes images we all abstractly see ourselves in and puts them out in the open.

With that, I need to go work on my own images. Let me know if you have any questions or if you need me to elaborate on anything. Do not worry about reading the articles if you don't have time, I just put them there for your interest. Try to do 3 complete analysis's at least.

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