06.11.2012: ALIKA COOPER'S FLAWED BEAUTIES

Brigitte (on couch) (2008)

Maybe this is the wrong place to start, but most paintings of women make me want to punch myself in the face. If you’ve ever read anything I’ve written on this blog, I’m pretty sure my distaste for most representations of females in, like, every media ever is clear, so it should come as no surprise that whenever I see another painting of a woman – especially if she’s naked – I tend to give the painting major side-eye, mutter something about originality and single-notedness under my breath, and walk away. And then there’s Alika Cooper.

Grace (Keith Haring Body Paint) (2010)

"WOMEN/works ON PAPER," curated by Yaoska Davila and up at TENOVERSIX until July 7, is a selection of Cooper’s paintings of famous women, starring the likes of Edie Sedgwick, Grace Jones, Brigitte Bardot, Twiggy, Farrah Fawcett & Little Edie Beale. Not only are these women famous; they’re women whose image literally made them who they are (or are remembered as) today. And that’s where this show just starts to get interesting; all of these paintings are based not solely on the women depicted, but rather on famous photos and stills of these women as depicted by someone else. Whether it’s Grace Jones as painted by Keith Haring as photographed by Tsen Kwong Chi or Brigitte Bardot in a scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, this body of work, created between 2007 and 2010, is definitely right on meta-trend.

Edie (grey gardens) (2008)

Edie (ciao manhattan) (2007)

The work definitely doesn’t stop at its meta-ness, however; just saying that these are paintings of pictures of famous women doesn’t at all do justice to the experience of looking at them. Cooper’s style turns these otherwise familiar images on their heads. They’re dirty, they’re gritty, they’re a little confusing. They add new and varied dimensions, sad and beautiful, vulnerable and strong, to the faces and bodies of women we’ve already seen thousands of times. Edie (ciao manhattan) (2007) seems to show a young neanderthal deep in thought. Edie (grey gardens) (2008) could be a painting of Joan of Arc. Adding to this disorientation is the fact that these celebrities are portrayed in goauche on paper with torn, uneven edges. Cooper takes the idea of idealized female celebrity and simultaneously flips it off and caresses it, telling it everything will be ok.

(L to R) Brigitte (large) (2007); Farrah (by Andy) (2008)

I guess in a way these paintings apply the modern lens through which we see young, beautiful female celebrities to their forebearers from a time before Wikipedia and the stalkerazzi. Britney was in a bad place for so long, but now it seems like she’s marrying a nice guy, and that makes me happy. Lindsay! Oh Lindsay. You wanna hate her, but then you remember her parents and understand everything. They’re beautiful, they’re ugly, they’re objects of desire, they’re objects of disgust, which is exactly how I feel while looking at (and sort of being judged by) Brigitte (large) (2007). She’s a little cross eyed and her skin is awful but that hair is so perfect. She’s clearly Brigitte Bardot, but there’s also something very off. Through these paintings we get to see a side of these women that may only exist in Cooper’s head but feels so real you wanna pop open a can of Sofia and drink champagne with them. Out of a can. Cause they actually seem like in this world, they’d be down for that.

Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.

04.16.2012: LACMA’S IN WONDERLAND (OR HOW I LEARNED TO LIKE SURREALISM AGAIN)

I may or may not be partial to Frida Kahlo’s Autorretrato con Collar because the cat in is the spitting image of my handsome black cat, Mung.

I’m a female, Mexican-American artist, so as soon as I heard about "In Wonderland" at LACMA, I emailed my mother and set a date to see it with her. Not only would there be Kahlos (I can’t be the only little girl who grew up simultaneously scared to death of and totally in love with the work of the woman whose image I was as familiar with as Our Lady of Guadalupe), there would be work from Francesca Woodman (every female, teenage art student’s wet dream, amirite?), Maya Deren (My other cat’s name is Glamour Girl, the cat she shared with Alexander Hammid), Louise Bourgeois, Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo, Yayoi Kusama, pretty much every badass female artist living and working in the US & Mexico around the same time as dudes were painting melting clocks.

Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon was the opener of the exhibit. While this was totally sick, what was even sicker was winding through the exhibit and occasionally hearing the soundtrack for it, contributing to the show’s extreme nonlinearness.

While I’m not in love with the name of the exhibit (I don’t necessarily think “grown ass female artist making pretty revolutionary work” when I think Alice), the subtitle, "The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and The United States," does something that, at least for me, was a pretty big deal from the get-go. For about 2 or 3 years now (because of Black Dahlia Avenger, I admit), the word “Surrealism” has sort of been a dirty word for me. I mean, duh, the work’s great, but those guys were misogynistic d-bags who basically stole an entire movement from their mothers (That may be a stretch, but if anyone can remember the name of the exhibit that showcased the insane photo collages of the mothers of Surrealists, plz let me know). Laaaaame. So in addition to Kahlo & Krew (BEST. GIRL GANG. EVER.) not generally being labeled Surrealists, that whole movement was starting to seem pretty tired and icky to me.

L to R: Duchamp’s Etant Donnes vs. Dorothea Tanning’s Birthday. Which makes you feel better about having a vagina?

But then along came Ilene Susan Fort and Tere Arcq to punch my brain in the face with the biggest “DUH” I never thought of. These women were totally Surrealists, and their work is work that not only I can fall into the rabbit hole of (nyuck nyuck nyuck), but my mom can, too! And Mexicans, and Mexican-Americans, both populations almost never addressed in the fine art world. And that is exactly what makes this exhibition so amazing. It is a collection of Surrealist works that utilize the visual and emotional vernacular of those generally seen as “other,” a group I am firmly planted in, a group that most people I know are firmly planted in, and you know what? It is just as mind-blowing as the work of the Surrealist men. I actually maybe even like most of it better. Snap.

Bridget Tichenor’s Autorretrato. Ugh. Slays me every time.

What most affected me about going to see "In Wonderland" was not the work, for the most part quite influential to me; it was all of these people, a majority of them women, many of them people of color, being so pumped to see the work. The crowd around Las Dos Fridas gave me an anxiety attack I haven’t experienced since the Mona Lisa. In the end, this show is way more than just a celebration of the female Surrealists; it is celebration of all those who look at these works and think “Finally, someone who gets me.”

"In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States" is at LACMA until May 6, 2012, when it will be traveling to Quebec and Mexico City.

Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.