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Art theft
(by Dickson Beall - January 20, 2010)
A multimillion-dollar supermodel, big-name giants in international art, glossy porn stars and faded TV celebrities: all get lots of love while participating in theft at White Flag Projects, a sophisticated New York-style white-box gallery near Manchester and Kingshighway.
Four artists, all of whom exhibit in New York, are included in the show titled Love and Theft. In the show, each artist works with an object — a figure, an image, someone or something that he or she loves — and then appropriates (an art term for “taking or directly copying” something, usually from another artist) in order to create an entirely new art object.
The result is an exhibit that is not the place to go for a nice little picture to hang over the sofa, nor a destination for that great first date nor an introductory art experience for children.
Asher Penn made 300 photocopies from three Wolfgang Tillman-shot portraits of supermodel Kate Moss, dropped red paint across each image and then folded the paper to create a Rorschach-like pattern across each portrait.
The idea for the Rorschach is that the viewer can project anything at all onto the Rorschach image. All meaning resides with the viewer. That certainly applies to the portrait of Moss or, for that matter, Penn’s final artwork.
The object of Mike Bidlo’s great love is a Robert Rauschenberg work, created when, in 1953, Rauschenberg asked Willem de Kooning to give him a drawing for the purpose of erasing it. One month and 40 erasers later, Rauschenberg had created the erased drawing, now a famous artwork called “Erased de Kooning Drawing.”
Bidlo took Rauschenberg’s idea and then went a step further. First, Bidlo meticulously copied de Kooning’s drawing and then carefully erased it, lifting the drawing from the paper’s surface and enshrining the remaining lightly smudged paper. Almost nothing is left for the viewer to see in what remains of Bidlo’s work — gold-framed and labeled, as was the original, but now titled “Not DeKooning Erased by Robert Rauschenberg.”
When the viewer confronts the 50-page grid of Dutes Miller’s body-centric art, the idea of love and theft becomes explicit. There’s no mystery as to what is loved here and, clearly, it’s not the history of art that is being taken from; this is magazine theft. But who would report the crime?
Miller collages glossy hard-core gay pornography and male anatomy — fragmenting wrestlers, weight-lifters and men narcissistically admiring themselves — into multiple images that Freud might have said both sexes would find enviable. There’s nothing subtle here, so expect some blushing as viewers hurry past shame and guilt — wondering whether anyone saw them looking — asking themselves how immature does one have to be to look at this?
Sara Greenberger Rafferty loves late-20th-century comedy figures who have done a fast fade from television and public consciousness. Rafferty reprints and manipulates photographs of these personalities, dripping fluids onto the images, in what might be blood, tears or other body fluids. There’s a palpable sadness and sense of loss in these intentionally washed-out pastel distortions. Destruction has occurred, yet a nostalgic beauty remains after the theft.
Rafferty’s portraits are of Valerie Harper of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Vicki Lawrence of the Carol Burnett Show and Joyce DeWitt of Three’s Company. Once the gossip columns and media find nothing else left to take, well, there’s Rafferty, lovingly appropriating these photographic images for her nostalgic and haunting art.
White Flag Director Matt Strauss curated — and rounded up these unusual suspects — for his well-conceived exhibition, sure to challenge traditional expectations, aesthetic standards and good taste. But he knows exactly what he’s doing and, for sure, St. Louis is a better place because of the Strauss brand.
Following in a family tradition of renovation and restoration, Matt Strauss and White Flag bring innovation to the visual arts. So, the bad boy of the venerable Strauss clan brings New York to St. Louis and, like it or not, it’s not Mary Poppins.
• Love & Theft with Mike Bidlo, Dutes Miller, Asher Penn and Sara Greenberger Rafferty continues through Feb. 13 at White Flag Projects, 4568 Manchester Ave. An artists’ reception will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. Jan. 23.
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