“Twenty Eight” featured twenty eight second year MFA students’ work ranging from painting, installations, performance, video and sculptural art. There was a huge diversity in the types of subject matter and approaches that each artist focused on, creating an exciting and intriguing collective exhibition. In the context of art movements since 1975, specifically the return of painting in the 80’s, one artist’s work stood out as an interesting subject matter. Artist, Justin Bower, painted Blue Boy using oil on canvas. This piece seems to embody what many painters were reaching for post the conceptual art movement of the 1970’s.
During the 1970’s painting had been completely forgotten and abandoned by the majority of the art community. Video, photography and performance art had taken over as the preferred mediums during the years of the avant-garde and conceptual art. However, as the 70’s reached an end painters began to strike back and revolt to this “‘narrow, puritan approach, devoid of all joy in the senses’” (Taylor, 67) and returned to the form. That is to say, that painters witnessed art reach such extremes that it could no longer be taken any further and the only way forward was to return to the basics.
Artists wanted to free themselves from the overtly political ramifications of the conceptual artists’ work and create art that could just exist as a beautiful expression of the artist through whatever medium was chosen. One specific artist that stands out from this group is Georg Baselitz. His work returned to figurative art, but also included abstract features. His painting Elke is a perfect example of his strategies and the return to the form with a progressive sense to the painting. Justin Bower’s Blue Boy seemed to embody the same sort of characteristics as many of Baselitz paintings and efforts.
Blue Boy is an aesthetically interesting and pleasurable piece of work that definitely functions towards pleasing the senses. It is a portrait traditionally framed with the face facing the audience. The ratio and form of the head works within traditional rules as well. However, the face is abstracted through wild brush strokes and faded duplications of certain body parts. The brush strokes are closely similar to those that Baselitz used in his Elke painting. The abstraction of the boys face can assert to the tension and arguments between traditional and abstract forms of expression that were taking place during the 80’s. This piece with its perfectly chosen colors embodies much of what painters were reaching for in reaction to conceptual artists. However, there was another group fighting against this arguing that a piece of art could not possibly escape political significance and that art should be more than something nice to look at.
The gallery did include few works that attempted to involve themselves politically and socially. Nevertheless the majority of the artists practiced the freedom of expression that painters were hungry for as the decade of the 1970’s closed out. The work was pleasing to look at, but the majority was dry of any sort of sociological statement. These artists are nonetheless talented and hopefully will leave school to keep developing their skills professionally in the Los Angeles art scene or wherever they chose to work.
Taylor, Brandon. Contemporary Art: Art Since 1970. Laurence King Publishing, London 2005.
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