Above: Hand of History (Ode to John Heartfield)
oil on canvas, 21.5 x 43 inches
Below: Artist Peter Otto
Exhibition: The Lodger
March 7 - April 9, 2010
3039 West Carroll Avenue
Chicago, IL 60612
(312) 420-4720
www.deveningprojects.com
Exhibition facilitated by Cultural Services in the USA / Consulate General of the Netherlands and Materiaalfonds, Amsterdam
Above: The Signal, oil on canvas, 27.5 x 37.5 inches
Above: Hope and Glory, oil on canvas, 31.5 x 43.5 inches
Above: Limelight, oil on canvas, 31.5 x 43.5 inches
Above: The Melting Compound, oil on canvas, 21.5 x 43 inches
Above: Schimmenveld, oil on canvas, 31.5 x 31.5 inches
Interest in "bad" painting has always confused me. I am guilty of similar attraction to George Condo, late Guston, Basquiat. But these are just lazy and awful.
I suppose that I ought to offer some sort of (late) defense against the charge of "lazy and awful" that's been made against Otto. In fairness, I don't know that I can do, or should be expected to do, as well as Otto himself did. I found him (at the opening) to be an excellent spokesman for his painting. It's a pleasure, always, to listen to an artist who's been at work for decades: familiar with, and confident in, his own ideas and execution.
The "bar" over which I expect a gallery owner to pass takes the form of a clean, well-lit space, in which artwork that he or she finds interesting and relevant is presented free from distraction. Some sort of biographical information, press compilation, and the ability to function as a liaison between the viewer, artist and work, adds up to a nice bonus.
The artist, in turn, I expect to be sincere, to have made an effort, and to understand that the choice of visual art as a mode of expression implies the desire to offer a meaningful visual experience: of color, of line, of shape, of texture, etc.
Where Otto did best, I think, was in his exploitation of the ambiguity resulting from painterly abstraction. Taken to an extreme, such an approach can be employed as a means of avoiding commitment or responsibility: References are, sometimes, made by "painters" in text--statements or titles--and then imputed to utterly formless or infantile renderings. It's no different, really, than a disingenuous Conceptual artist's transformation of some found object into a beast of burden for a wholly disconnected ideology.
With Otto the case is different...
This is a crop from Hand of History (Ode to John Heartfield) above:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2752/4495213377_7d451526ae_m.jpg
And this is a crop from Heartfield's 1934 piece O Christmas Tree in German Soil, How Crooked Are Your Branches:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4014/4495852442_96b6ebc669_m.jpg
So there seems to be evidence that Otto is conscious of, and able to refer, not only in text but also in visual form, to the history of art which has preceded himself. There is something in (at least some of) the paintings to be teased-out over time; they aren't stupid or lazy. Well-developed is a system of containers and coverings: physical and metaphysical. It's surreal, it's abstract, it's (maybe) rooted too in Expressionism. But I think that Wesley was correct to steer his interlocutors in Art in America towards Post Modernism; and maybe Otto's historical eclecticism points there too.
As an addition, there's a short review over at Newcity:
http://art.newcity.com/2010/04/05/review-peter-ottodan-devening-projects-editions
Thanks!
It's lazy to call a piece of work lazy without actually providing a well thought out critique of why you feel the work is lazy. Awful is another highly subjective term that needs to be contextualized to have any substance... you might as well say they are not beautiful, because at least then we will know that you are critiquing purely from your personal subjective aesthetic preferences, and not actually critiquing the works function. I'm also going to guess that you are judging from internet images, and didn't actually see the show?
There's a reason this is the 'comments' section and not the 'art babble bullshit critique' section. These paintings do nothing to extend a hand and guide a fresh outlook beyond fin de siecle post-modern exhaustion. They are collapsed and flaccid, unable to catch their breath after a thoughtless romp in the mud.
Mr Lambert: it must be an awful fate to find that your lot in life is to fulfill the destiny of being an indifferent painter lacking any real talent. Clearly this artist does not lack in dedication or sincerity, but in the end is simply, not very good. Show some compassion- as much of a mindless romp in the mud as I agree with you, this work is.
Look, I'm all for art therapy. That is a form of compassion I can extend to anyone using art as a coping mechanism for whatever ails ya. Just don't ask me to consider the product in aesthetic terms unless you can display the most basic ability to arrange form and color.