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[[image]] Portrait, 1971. Acrylic on Celotex. Collection of Nancy Olnick. Photograph courtesy of Kent Fine Art. place recalls certain paintings by George Tooker, whom Artschwager knew in the 1960s (for example, The Subway, 1950, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). Artschwager painted a thin wash over the entire surface of Men's Dormitory, creating a gray uniformity that evokes the clouded yet strong pull of memory. Viewed from across the room, this painting has a photographic certainty but, like a memory, its details blur on close inspection. The painting Portrait exemplifies Artschwager's penchant for the unquiet. It shows an upper-class interior (or is it an historic house museum?) well appointed with furniture and paintings. Central to the image is an evening gown displayed on a headless mannequin. The dress resembles that worn by the woman in the 1840s-style portrait that hangs behind it. The artist projects the viewer's imagination into a situation that might be normal, slightly odd, or even bizarre. Artschwager's image is based on a photograph, but do we trust it? If the place it depicts is (or was) real, should we interpret the painting as a presentation of social information, as an artistic reflection of human pride and acquisitiveness, or what? Artschwager's sense of irony and mysterious derangement have flourished in recent years. Chair/Chair is a richly provocative sculpture inspired by a modest folding chair remembered from his childhood; the 1920s chair can be glimpsed in a family snapshot. The sculpture is larger and much wider than its inspiration. In a lengthy sequence of transformations, the artist made the curves more pronounced and created a low-slung attitude more suggestive of delightful languor than of upright sitting. The Formica veneer on the back splat is lively, intricate, and symmetrical. Its visceral and fantastic appearance would make it a good substitute for the inkblots in a Rorschach test. Unlike the original, Chair/Chair is upholstered in erotic, hairy cowhide. Furthermore, the seat has a central cleft that seems to mimic the cheeks of the buttocks. This object is both a presentation of a chair and a manifestation of various ideas about chairness, from structure and function to personality. The piece's structural complexity and finesse testify to the skills of the artist and his studio, but as a sculpture it celebrates a mind that is free to stretch, distort, simplify, and abridge in order to create art. Chair/Chair, 1987-90. Red oak, Formica, cowhide, and painted steel. Department of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, NEA Purchase Plan and Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow Fund. 1990.497. [[image]] If we consider Artschwager's involvement with everyday subjects, popular culture, and commercial materials, he can be aligned with Pop Art. Moreover, the factory-fresh, hard-edged presentations especially evident in his Formica sculptures often recall the impassive objectivity of Minimal Art. Since he takes the images for some of his paintings directly from photographs, he has been a key influence on the emergence of the Photo-Realist movement. He has also been discussed with Conceptual Art because his work draws attention [[image]] Photograph taken by Artschwager's father, Ernst. Courtesy of Richard Artschwager. to the roles of both image and idea in the way it engages the viewer. Thus, it is argued, his paintings function simultaneously in two distinct ways. They are paintings that objectify the illusionistic business of art - the shuttling of data between the real world, the picture plane, the retina, and the mind. The idiosyncrasies of Artschwager's art and its unpredictability allow his work to haunt the peripheries of various movements, but it is never quite "right" to illustrate the official discourse generated by any of the "major trends" of the last three decades. The artist is happy to be a stylistic oddball, for this gives room to the irrational and nonverbal issues that are important to him. Language often accompanies the distribution and reception of art, but Artschwager nobly, rhetorically, and stubboornly argues that art itself is a visual and non-literate phenomenon. He believes that the making of art is a pre-literate impulse and activity; in short, art exists primarily to be seen and to be a presence that the viewer chooses to engage. When art is subjected to language it is cut down or stretched to fit linguistic and
