Wednesday, March 31, 2010

APE AS ART

ORIGINALLY POSTED 1-6-2009

The ever entertaining MONSTER CRAZY recently posted this striking piece entitled THE DREAM (AKA KING KONG). Now my inner gorilla geek is bothered that the ape in question is not identified as Konga but I can overlook that considering that we're examining fine art. I thought the work might have been a recent piece but I was surprised that it was in fact a pop art creation of Rosalyn Drexler.
As early as 1960, Drexler was using the icons of Pop Culture as the organizing subject matter of her work.  Images of gangster B-movies, tabloid journalism, and pulp detective novels were collaged directly onto the canvases and then entirely “re-painted” to create the kind of graphically transformed and narratively intensified work associated with the great pioneers of art in the early sixties.  Drexler went on to hone her technique to powerfully expose society’s raw nerves in her emotionally charged, ambiguous scenes of sex, violence and the isolation of man in the 20th century. 

From PACE WILDENSTEIN

The Dream (aka King Kong) 1963

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