Jean-Paul Riopelle
Jean-Paul Riopelle Port Coton, 1959
A luscious and early example of Jean-Paul Riopelle’s non-representational landscape paintings, Port Coton, circa 1959, transforms color into real, tangible form. The blocky and jagged delineations dominating the composition, bristling with oceanic hues and earthy tones, evoke the eponymous rock formations adorning the shore of Belle-Île, just below the coast of Brittany. With its famed tempestuous and dramatic setting, the storm-swept island inspired a number of painters including Claude Monet and Henri Matisse, amounting, namely, to Monet’s seminal The Rocks at Belle-Ile, 1886, now residing in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. This earlier painting, preceding the present work by nearly a century, feels like a stunning point of departure from which to envisage Riopelle’s contemporary, abstract interpretation, rendered with a deeply physical approach, and oscillating between the painterly and the sculptural. Created on the heels of Riopelle’s major solo exhibition which took place at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, and immediately following his reception of the prestigious Guggenheim International Award, both bestowed in 1958, Port Coton encapsulates the artist’s revered aesthetic and technique at the height of his creative powers.
Noah Davis
Noah Davis Single Mother with Father our of the Picture, 2007-2008
Although his life and career were tragically cut short by a rare form of cancer at the age of 32, artist Noah Davis made a powerful impact on the art world, creating psychologically-driven figurative paintings that strived to convey the everyday lives of African Americans outside of popular stereotypes.
Painted in 2007-08, Single Mother with Father out of the Picture is an intimate portrait of a mother and daughter in an interior setting, going about their everyday lives. Though the artist’s subjects are African American, Davis remarks, “Race plays a role in as far as my figures are black. The paintings aren’t political at all though. If I’m making any statement, it’s to just show black people in normal scenarios” (Noah Davis, quoted in Dazed Digital, February 9, 2010, online). Poignantly capturing the banality of everyday life, Davis’ paintings convey a depth of emotion precisely because the scenes he chooses to portray are so personal. While the artist depicts a family at home, the father is notably absent. Yet, to the right of the composition, a frame resting on a table alludes to a picture of a male figure, potentially a father, which the artist has purposefully chosen to obscure through his cropping of the composition. In this way, his paintings stand in as narrator for forgotten or suppressed moments in American history as told through a distinctly modern lens.
KAWS
KAWS COMPANION (PASSING THROUGH), 2011
Seated with eyes covered, head resting in hands, COMPANION (PASSING THROUGH), 2011, captures KAWS’ signature COMPANION figure in an isolated state of introspection. Conjuring a myriad of emotions ranging from sadness, to fatigue, to complete overwhelm, the figure’s familiar posture invites empathy from its viewers.
KAWS created his first COMPANION figure in 1999 as a small-scale figurine and, over the next two decades, this character has become a cornerstone of his celebrated oeuvre. Inspired by the enduring celebrity of the iconic cartoon character, Mickey Mouse, COMPANION is replete with white gloves, shorts with buttons, and globular cartoon-shoes. Yet in quintessential KAWS fashion, the artist has replaced Mickey’s head with his signature skull with X’ed out eyes. Of his COMPANIONS, KAWS explains, “Even though I use a comic language, my figures are not always reflecting the idealistic cartoon view that I grew up on… COMPANION is more real in dealing with contemporary human circumstances” (KAWS, quoted in KAWS: WHERE THE END STARTS, exh. cat., Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, 2016, p. 5). Equally personal as it is universal, somber as it is playful, COMPANION (PASSING THROUGH) is a poignant reflection of the modern-day human condition, inviting viewers to ponder the fragility of personal circumstances and the universality of emotion.