NYAB Event - Roger Brown “Political Paintings”

Roger Brown “Political Paintings”

DC Moore Gallery

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DC Moore Gallery present Roger Brown: Political Paintings. Spanning the years 1983 to 1991, the work on view provocatively addresses the defining political, social, environmental, and economic crises of the era. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition, featuring an essay by Lisa Stone, Curator of the Roger Brown Study Collection of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Brown’s paintings deliver biting commentary on the Gulf War, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the Savings & Loan industry collapse and bailout through inventive use of luminous color, silhouetted figures, stylized natural forms, and dramatic shifts of scale and perspective. “Impelled by current events and keenly sorting through the assorted forms of news media⎯from standard newspapers and TV coverage, to sensationalized tabloids and talk shows⎯Brown observed and responded to current events as they unfolded,” Stone writes. In The War We Won (1991), four life-size politicians mark the end of the Cold War with stiff smiles and an unconvincing handshake, while another conflict escalates in Gulf War (1991).

Like his Chicago Imagist peers, Brown aggressively blended borrowings from art history with the languages of vernacular culture. Paintings such as Can’t Never Could / The Courage to Face The Trials And Bring A Whole New Body of Possibilities Into The Field of Interpreted Experience For Other People To Experience – That Is the {Artist’s] Deed, Joseph Campbell. (I Paraphrase Artist’s For Hero’s) because Campbell Said Artists Are Our Heroes. Read Pages 40-41 of “The Power of Myth” With Bill Moyers (1991) incorporate text on bands of yellow ribbon familiar from carnival sideshow banners. La Cage Aux Folles (Only the Names are Changed to Protect the Innocent) (1986) and 57th Street (After Sunset Blvd.) (1988) blend formal devices from both fresco cycles and comic strips to skewer art world figures and market trends. “Brown’s political paintings represent a strong and sustained current in the arc of his career,” Stone writes, “but they are balanced by an equally-rich vein of personal and spiritual reflections. Illusion (1985), with its haunting visualization of the thin line between life and death, spans both realms.”