Apotheoses had been something of a common art historical genre in centuries past, and still are in many ways. A great way for you the artist to snag a ducat; a patron gets their name attached to the work (think the Sacklers or Waltons doing 18th century Venice); and! AND!! the nation or city-state also gets to add another gem in their costume crown attesting to their legitimacy, good governance, mandate, what have you. It all works out for everyone! the pre-connected, monied, and embedded bloated leisure class parasites. I’ll go back to my lane and leave the dissection of culture and power to Natalie Wynn whose precision analysis is an overdue scalpel for the more terminal and unsustainable ills of the greater Occidental hegemony.
Hennywayyyyyyy, this was perhaps the first piece that I was not only satisfied with but genuinely liked and was very proud of. There are a good number of my personal milestones in the arts set into the architecture of this piece. That stone disc: a halo. It is also an image of a gorgeous piece by Carolyn Webb, local hero, and an artist whose install was my last at UMass Amherst.
The trimmed postcard that supports that glossy and swole beef-slab, rosy orange melded with purple, reminds me of a nostalgia soaked talismanic Polaroid. Framed in white, this features a vignette of A.V. Janssens work in a 2007 exhibition catalogue from The Experience of Color, the very first installation I ever assisted with making happen.
Baby’s first install. :3
In this exhibition Diana Thater’s video and color installations fused seamlessly with those of Ann Veronica Janssens’ projections through dichroic glass in the sombre sacrosanct perfection of the UMass Amherst Fine Arts Center, the platonic ideal of a renaissance barrow if ever there was one. My personal never ending thanks to the exemplary staff that suffered my terrible music choices during those times. Eva Fierst, Craig Allaben, Loretta Yarlow, my sincerest thanks.
Award-ceremony histrionics aside, let’s finally get on to the main entree: pulp carnality. So front and centered, g(u)ilt-framed, a recumbent, resplendent Stud McHardfuck exudes (pro)creation, head tipped back in ecstatic post-cum clarity. The Swarovski deer head, carries again virile yet puerile maturity with its established and ever-so-subtle phallic multi-point antlers. The Limoges tambourine figure plays at performance, kitsch, effeminacy.
The whole gold-leafed enchilada, mockingly top-heavy, a beautiful grotesque, is tourniquet-bound upon a spindle of butterflies, roses, and gems. All soldered to an anchor of hefty self importance, a turgid taproot embedded in excess.
I chose the background of a twilight toned nebula because the colors all worked together, picking up on the post card, contrasting nicely with the gold and tanned images. I think I threw those roses down to cover up errors, but also to enhance. ENHANCE.
Can’t dazzle them with your brilliance? Baffle them with verbose bullshit.
See you, Sailors.
xoxo,
-Ian.