Judith Bernstein. Voyeur, 2015; installation view, Mary Boone Gallery, New York. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: John Reynolds.

Since 1967, Judith Bernstein has provided a swift undercurrent to painting in New York. Until recently, despite her storied history in the scene, the grit, tenacity, and technically precise rebel yell of Bernstein’s work has largely gone under-recognized. On the occasion of her current show at Mary Boone Gallery, I sat down with the artist to discuss her newest work, the fantastic threat of the looming vagina, feminist recourse to power, and perseverance.

Elspeth Walker: When I first saw your actual paintings, I realized that I hope they upset men.

Judith Bernstein: Well, I do the work that I have to do. If the men are upset, if they’re not upset, if they love it, if they don’t love it—whatever. I don’t think about the reactions of other people. I am on my own trajectory. There are a lot of very angry women, but my work is about the continually changing dialogue between men and women and about women being much stronger, now.

EW: I feel the abrasiveness of your work is welcome and necessary.

JB: I think one has to be very direct, in all kinds of ways—in my case, genitalia and everything right in your face. I’ve found that directness is a metaphor for my life. My background was quite dysfunctional; I had to scream and yell to be heard. And for a long time I was not heard; I was not given a show in the New York gallery system for many years. I’m thrilled that now I can talk about what I want to say.

Judith Bernstein. Quattro Cunts, 2015; oil on canvas; 84 x 84 in. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: John Reynolds.

In the past, the rawness was not accepted within an art context, but now it is. I sense the zeitgeist at this time, and it’s extraordinary. I was in a lot of women’s groups, like A.I.R. (the first feminist gallery), Guerrilla Girls, and Fight Censorship. I saw how enraged women were. They were angry because they didn’t get what they wanted.  My mother didn’t know what she wanted, but she didn’t like the life she had. I saw all that rage and anger. Many artists have used female genitalia in a very romanticized way. That’s fine for them but not for me. I have anger, too.

EW: The title Birth of the Universe alludes to art-historical depictions of the vagina, for instance Courbet’s L’origine du Monde. Your work makes that old painting seem benign. Courbet’s painting positions women as the butt of a joke: as either an erotic object or a utilitarian object.

JB: It’s saying, “Woman is a cunt.” I’m using cunt in a very aggressive way, so it has a whole different meaning. But Courbet’s painting was done in a different time; it’s very sexist. I also think of my own work as like Munch’s painting of the scream because it conveys enormous aggression and the anxiety of the times—a lot of sexual anxiety.

EW: What draws you to use ultraviolet black light and your colors?

JB: I was thinking about how the fluorescent color would look next to the oil paint; it changes the color of the oil paint tremendously. For example, if you put a pretty pink next to the fluorescent color, it looks like a neutral skin color. My show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise was under black light. There was a little ambient light, and you could see some of the oil paint. But this show at Mary Boone has a different context: Everything is a combination of fluorescent as well as black light, so it brings out the fluorescent and the oil paint.

EW: To me, lighting a painting with black light was revolutionary because you were obscuring parts of it, but other parts became really vivid…

JB: …and one saw the calligraphy, and the painting faded into the background. Gavin Brown’s is a great space, and I had some extremely large paintings there. The show was like going into my mind, like creating a whole environment—a kind of hallucinatory effect.

EW: Considering your extended time in the New York scene and what it’s like to be an “art-world survivor,” or what it’s like to have maintained a practice for many years, do you feel like there’s a difference between what you’re saying now and what you’ve said before and how you feel people have responded?

JB: I’ve been in New York since 1967, when I graduated from Yale School of Art. When I came here, women had no access to the very small art world, and I was outside of it. I was part of this feminist movement, but I wasn’t embraced by women. You have to have enormous drive: This is the only thing you really want to do. Because I didn’t show my work for a long time, I wasn’t making any money from it, and it was very depressing.

Everyone thinks her or his work is fabulous, and many times they can’t understand why things haven’t happened for them. I thought I might be as delusional as some of those people. But it is wonderful, after twenty-four years of not having a show in New York, to get a show. I’m getting a lot of opportunities now, but it’s taken a long time for my work to sell at a decent price.

EW: In many ways, the art world has caught up to your material, but your work is still so different from what others are doing. It’s very interesting to compare your work with that of male artists who are showing everywhere and getting rich in six months…

JB: …and making much more money from their work than I am. The difference is unbelievable.

EW: It’s astonishing, this persistent imbalance. In the face of that, I think the subject of your work does so much. Painting a scream, like Munch’s, effectively balances the volume—the impact of work by male artists.

JB: That’s right.

EW: The larger cunt paintings evoke fetish, particularly the submissive male fantasy of this enormous vagina that consumes this tiny cock or even the man himself (which is hilarious). But they do make me think about the power of fantasy. Whether it’s intentional or not, these fantasies stage an alternate reality in which the cunt is the center, and it controls and consumes.

JB: When I showed the work under black light, I thought of it as an alternate reality, an alternate universe.

EW: I think of fetish as an almost uncontrollable restaging of these dominant systems of power—as flipping them.

JB: Yes, and that’s what happened with the screw drawings. Mine’s Bigger Than Yours is like a feminist dig: I can take that image and make it into a feminist power image. On those drawings, I made my signatures gigantic because I wanted to make sure everyone knew a woman did it. The work stands out and resonates because of fantasy. When I go into my subconscious in my work, the image comes out more powerful because it deals with fantasy. It deals with the fears that men have, with what women want. I hone into the fantasy and try to nail it.

EW: When looking at your Signature Piece in the New Museum show, I thought: This is right. Why wouldn’t we know and see this name, this woman’s name, this large, as opposed to….

JB: It’s about male posturing, male stardom, male ego—but it’s also about my ego. To enter the show, the viewer went through my mind, through the self-portrait of my name. It put the woman at the center, where she should be. [Laughs]

EW: I want to talk about the cunt as a floating signifier: The reality that not all women have cunts, or vaginas, and some men do. The cunt is an intense symbol; in your work it seems to be wrested free from connotations with a particular anatomy. These latest paintings have floating anatomical signifiers: a pair of breasts, tiny dicks, cunts that are crying.

JB: In a way, I did that with the male, too. Screws became a combination screw–phallus. The Biblical Judith cut off Holofernes’ head. I fool around with all of that. I like the cunt as a signifier because in one way it takes away the power and in another way it makes you face the power. One piece at Mary Boone has three cunts in a row and three nooses. I was thinking at the time that women often feel, “I gave birth to you; you owe me,” and it’s like strangling. It’s about birth and death. I tried to make these thoughts into a visual image that one could keep as an icon in the mind.

EW: The noose mimics the shape of the cunt, as well. To me, the work is also about not letting the category of woman escape examination. The noose is perhaps an acknowledgement of this idea: that getting hung up on these biological signifiers is a trap or it can thwart you.

JB: Women have their issues, but they haven’t had power as much as men, so they haven’t fucked up as much. [Laughs] We’re now thinking of sexuality on a continuum. People are not only making their own lives but also making their own sexuality and their own fantasies. There’s a greater range in the way that women—and men and the whole human race—can behave. And it’s liberating.

EW: What are your thoughts for women who are working as artists now?

JB: You have to find your own way. If you want to be an artist, you have to keep plugging at it. It’s very hard because you can get a lot of doors slammed on you, which I have gotten. But that’s not always the case. To hang in as long as I did is extraordinary; I don’t think that most people would hang in that long. But it’s important to be true to what you want to say and how you want to handle that. You have to keep moving forward. You can’t just stay where you are. You really have to constantly keep moving in terms of what you want to say, how you are saying it, and reevaluating it. It’s a very tough road.

Judith Bernstein: Voyeur was on view at Mary Boone Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue, through June 27, 2015.

Judith Bernstein. Voyeur, 2015; installation view, Mary Boone Gallery, New York. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: John Reynolds.

Since 1967, Judith Bernstein has provided a swift undercurrent to painting in New York. Until recently, despite her storied history in the scene, the grit, tenacity, and technically precise rebel yell of Bernstein’s work has largely gone under-recognized. On the occasion of her current show at Mary Boone Gallery, I sat down with the artist to discuss her newest work, the fantastic threat of the looming vagina, feminist recourse to power, and perseverance.

Elspeth Walker: When I first saw your actual paintings, I realized that I hope they upset men.

Judith Bernstein: Well, I do the work that I have to do. If the men are upset, if they’re not upset, if they love it, if they don’t love it—whatever. I don’t think about the reactions of other people. I am on my own trajectory. There are a lot of very angry women, but my work is about the continually changing dialogue between men and women and about women being much stronger, now.

EW: I feel the abrasiveness of your work is welcome and necessary.

JB: I think one has to be very direct, in all kinds of ways—in my case, genitalia and everything right in your face. I’ve found that directness is a metaphor for my life. My background was quite dysfunctional; I had to scream and yell to be heard. And for a long time I was not heard; I was not given a show in the New York gallery system for many years. I’m thrilled that now I can talk about what I want to say. In the past, the rawness was not accepted within an art context, but now it is. I sense the zeitgeist at this time, and it’s extraordinary. I was in a lot of women’s groups, like A.I.R. (the first feminist gallery), Guerrilla Girls, and Fight Censorship. I saw how enraged women were. They were angry because they didn’t get what they wanted.  My mother didn’t know what she wanted, but she didn’t like the life she had. I saw all that rage and anger. Many artists have used female genitalia in a very romanticized way. That’s fine for them but not for me. I have anger, too.

Judith Bernstein. Quattro Cunts, 2015; oil on canvas; 84 x 84 in. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: John Reynolds.

EW: The title Birth of the Universe alludes to art-historical depictions of the vagina, for instance Courbet’s L’origine du Monde. Your work makes that old painting seem benign. Courbet’s painting positions women as the butt of a joke: as either an erotic object or a utilitarian object.

JB: It’s saying, “Woman is a cunt.” I’m using cunt in a very aggressive way, so it has a whole different meaning. But Courbet’s painting was done in a different time; it’s very sexist. I also think of my own work as like Munch’s painting of the scream because it conveys enormous aggression and the anxiety of the times—a lot of sexual anxiety.

EW: What draws you to use ultraviolet black light and your colors?

JB: I was thinking about how the fluorescent color would look next to the oil paint; it changes the color of the oil paint tremendously. For example, if you put a pretty pink next to the fluorescent color, it looks like a neutral skin color. My show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise was under black light. There was a little ambient light, and you could see some of the oil paint. But this show at Mary Boone has a different context: Everything is a combination of fluorescent as well as black light, so it brings out the fluorescent and the oil paint.

EW: To me, lighting a painting with black light was revolutionary because you were obscuring parts of it, but other parts became really vivid…

JB: …and one saw the calligraphy, and the painting faded into the background. Gavin Brown’s is a great space, and I had some extremely large paintings there. The show was like going into my mind, like creating a whole environment—a kind of hallucinatory effect.

EW: Considering your extended time in the New York scene and what it’s like to be an “art-world survivor,” or what it’s like to have maintained a practice for many years, do you feel like there’s a difference between what you’re saying now and what you’ve said before and how you feel people have responded?

JB: I’ve been in New York since 1967, when I graduated from Yale School of Art. When I came here, women had no access to the very small art world, and I was outside of it. I was part of this feminist movement, but I wasn’t embraced by women. You have to have enormous drive: This is the only thing you really want to do. Because I didn’t show my work for a long time, I wasn’t making any money from it, and it was very depressing.

Everyone thinks her or his work is fabulous, and many times they can’t understand why things haven’t happened for them. I thought I might be as delusional as some of those people. But it is wonderful, after twenty-four years of not having a show in New York, to get a show. I’m getting a lot of opportunities now, but it’s taken a long time for my work to sell at a decent price.

EW: In many ways, the art world has caught up to your material, but your work is still so different from what others are doing. It’s very interesting to compare your work with that of male artists who are showing everywhere and getting rich in six months…

JB: …and making much more money from their work than I am. The difference is unbelievable.

EW: It’s astonishing, this persistent imbalance. In the face of that, I think the subject of your work does so much. Painting a scream, like Munch’s, effectively balances the volume—the impact of work by male artists.

JB: That’s right.

EW: The larger cunt paintings evoke fetish, particularly the submissive male fantasy of this enormous vagina that consumes this tiny cock or even the man himself (which is hilarious). But they do make me think about the power of fantasy. Whether it’s intentional or not, these fantasies stage an alternate reality in which the cunt is the center, and it controls and consumes.

JB: When I showed the work under black light, I thought of it as an alternate reality, an alternate universe.

EW: I think of fetish as an almost uncontrollable restaging of these dominant systems of power—as flipping them.

JB: Yes, and that’s what happened with the screw drawings. Mine’s Bigger Than Yours is like a feminist dig: I can take that image and make it into a feminist power image. On those drawings, I made my signatures gigantic because I wanted to make sure everyone knew a woman did it. The work stands out and resonates because of fantasy. When I go into my subconscious in my work, the image comes out more powerful because it deals with fantasy. It deals with the fears that men have, with what women want. I hone into the fantasy and try to nail it.

EW: When looking at your Signature Piece in the New Museum show, I thought: This is right. Why wouldn’t we know and see this name, this woman’s name, this large, as opposed to….

JB: It’s about male posturing, male stardom, male ego—but it’s also about my ego. To enter the show, the viewer went through my mind, through the self-portrait of my name. It put the woman at the center, where she should be. [Laughs]

EW: I want to talk about the cunt as a floating signifier: The reality that not all women have cunts, or vaginas, and some men do. The cunt is an intense symbol; in your work it seems to be wrested free from connotations with a particular anatomy. These latest paintings have floating anatomical signifiers: a pair of breasts, tiny dicks, cunts that are crying.

JB: In a way, I did that with the male, too. Screws became a combination screw–phallus. The Biblical Judith cut off Holofernes’ head. I fool around with all of that. I like the cunt as a signifier because in one way it takes away the power and in another way it makes you face the power. One piece at Mary Boone has three cunts in a row and three nooses. I was thinking at the time that women often feel, “I gave birth to you; you owe me,” and it’s like strangling. It’s about birth and death. I tried to make these thoughts into a visual image that one could keep as an icon in the mind.

EW: The noose mimics the shape of the cunt, as well. To me, the work is also about not letting the category of woman escape examination. The noose is perhaps an acknowledgement of this idea: that getting hung up on these biological signifiers is a trap or it can thwart you.

JB: Women have their issues, but they haven’t had power as much as men, so they haven’t fucked up as much. [Laughs] We’re now thinking of sexuality on a continuum. People are not only making their own lives but also making their own sexuality and their own fantasies. There’s a greater range in the way that women—and men and the whole human race—can behave. And it’s liberating.

EW: What are your thoughts for women who are working as artists now?

JB: You have to find your own way. If you want to be an artist, you have to keep plugging at it. It’s very hard because you can get a lot of doors slammed on you, which I have gotten. But that’s not always the case. To hang in as long as I did is extraordinary; I don’t think that most people would hang in that long. But it’s important to be true to what you want to say and how you want to handle that. You have to keep moving forward. You can’t just stay where you are. You really have to constantly keep moving in terms of what you want to say, how you are saying it, and reevaluating it. It’s a very tough road.

Judith Bernstein: Voyeur was on view at Mary Boone Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue, through June 27, 2015. 

Judith Bernstein. Voyeur, 2015; installation view, Mary Boone Gallery, New York. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: John Reynolds.

Elspeth Walker: When I first saw your actual paintings, I realized that I hope they upset men.

Judith Bernstein: Well, I do the work that I have to do. If the men are upset, if they’re not upset, if they love it, if they don’t love it—whatever. I don’t think about the reactions of other people. I am on my own trajectory. There are a lot of very angry women, but my work is about the continually changing dialogue between men and women and about women being much stronger, now.

EW: I feel the abrasiveness of your work is welcome and necessary.

JB: I think one has to be very direct, in all kinds of ways—in my case, genitalia and everything right in your face. I’ve found that directness is a metaphor for my life. My background was quite dysfunctional; I had to scream and yell to be heard. And for a long time I was not heard; I was not given a show in the New York gallery system for many years. I’m thrilled that now I can talk about what I want to say.

Judith Bernstein. Quattro Cunts, 2015; oil on canvas; 84 x 84 in. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: John Reynolds.

In the past, the rawness was not accepted within an art context, but now it is. I sense the zeitgeist at this time, and it’s extraordinary. I was in a lot of women’s groups, like A.I.R. (the first feminist gallery), Guerrilla Girls, and Fight Censorship. I saw how enraged women were. They were angry because they didn’t get what they wanted.  My mother didn’t know what she wanted, but she didn’t like the life she had. I saw all that rage and anger. Many artists have used female genitalia in a very romanticized way. That’s fine for them but not for me. I have anger, too.

EW: The title Birth of the Universe alludes to art-historical depictions of the vagina, for instance Courbet’s L’origine du Monde. Your work makes that old painting seem benign. Courbet’s painting positions women as the butt of a joke: as either an erotic object or a utilitarian object.

JB: It’s saying, “Woman is a cunt.” I’m using cunt in a very aggressive way, so it has a whole different meaning. But Courbet’s painting was done in a different time; it’s very sexist. I also think of my own work as like Munch’s painting of the scream because it conveys enormous aggression and the anxiety of the times—a lot of sexual anxiety.

EW: What draws you to use ultraviolet black light and your colors?

JB: I was thinking about how the fluorescent color would look next to the oil paint; it changes the color of the oil paint tremendously. For example, if you put a pretty pink next to the fluorescent color, it looks like a neutral skin color. My show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise was under black light. There was a little ambient light, and you could see some of the oil paint. But this show at Mary Boone has a different context: Everything is a combination of fluorescent as well as black light, so it brings out the fluorescent and the oil paint.

EW: To me, lighting a painting with black light was revolutionary because you were obscuring parts of it, but other parts became really vivid…

JB: …and one saw the calligraphy, and the painting faded into the background. Gavin Brown’s is a great space, and I had some extremely large paintings there. The show was like going into my mind, like creating a whole environment—a kind of hallucinatory effect.

EW: Considering your extended time in the New York scene and what it’s like to be an “art-world survivor,” or what it’s like to have maintained a practice for many years, do you feel like there’s a difference between what you’re saying now and what you’ve said before and how you feel people have responded?

JB: I’ve been in New York since 1967, when I graduated from Yale School of Art. When I came here, women had no access to the very small art world, and I was outside of it. I was part of this feminist movement, but I wasn’t embraced by women. You have to have enormous drive: This is the only thing you really want to do. Because I didn’t show my work for a long time, I wasn’t making any money from it, and it was very depressing.

Everyone thinks her or his work is fabulous, and many times they can’t understand why things haven’t happened for them. I thought I might be as delusional as some of those people. But it is wonderful, after twenty-four years of not having a show in New York, to get a show. I’m getting a lot of opportunities now, but it’s taken a long time for my work to sell at a decent price.

EW: In many ways, the art world has caught up to your material, but your work is still so different from what others are doing. It’s very interesting to compare your work with that of male artists who are showing everywhere and getting rich in six months…

JB: …and making much more money from their work than I am. The difference is unbelievable.

EW: It’s astonishing, this persistent imbalance. In the face of that, I think the subject of your work does so much. Painting a scream, like Munch’s, effectively balances the volume—the impact of work by male artists.

JB: That’s right.

EW: The larger cunt paintings evoke fetish, particularly the submissive male fantasy of this enormous vagina that consumes this tiny cock or even the man himself (which is hilarious). But they do make me think about the power of fantasy. Whether it’s intentional or not, these fantasies stage an alternate reality in which the cunt is the center, and it controls and consumes.

JB: When I showed the work under black light, I thought of it as an alternate reality, an alternate universe.

EW: I think of fetish as an almost uncontrollable restaging of these dominant systems of power—as flipping them.

JB: Yes, and that’s what happened with the screw drawings. Mine’s Bigger Than Yours is like a feminist dig: I can take that image and make it into a feminist power image. On those drawings, I made my signatures gigantic because I wanted to make sure everyone knew a woman did it. The work stands out and resonates because of fantasy. When I go into my subconscious in my work, the image comes out more powerful because it deals with fantasy. It deals with the fears that men have, with what women want. I hone into the fantasy and try to nail it.

EW: When looking at your Signature Piece in the New Museum show, I thought: This is right. Why wouldn’t we know and see this name, this woman’s name, this large, as opposed to….

JB: It’s about male posturing, male stardom, male ego—but it’s also about my ego. To enter the show, the viewer went through my mind, through the self-portrait of my name. It put the woman at the center, where she should be. [Laughs]

EW: I want to talk about the cunt as a floating signifier: The reality that not all women have cunts, or vaginas, and some men do. The cunt is an intense symbol; in your work it seems to be wrested free from connotations with a particular anatomy. These latest paintings have floating anatomical signifiers: a pair of breasts, tiny dicks, cunts that are crying.

JB: In a way, I did that with the male, too. Screws became a combination screw–phallus. The Biblical Judith cut off Holofernes’ head. I fool around with all of that. I like the cunt as a signifier because in one way it takes away the power and in another way it makes you face the power. One piece at Mary Boone has three cunts in a row and three nooses. I was thinking at the time that women often feel, “I gave birth to you; you owe me,” and it’s like strangling. It’s about birth and death. I tried to make these thoughts into a visual image that one could keep as an icon in the mind.

EW: The noose mimics the shape of the cunt, as well. To me, the work is also about not letting the category of woman escape examination. The noose is perhaps an acknowledgement of this idea: that getting hung up on these biological signifiers is a trap or it can thwart you.

JB: Women have their issues, but they haven’t had power as much as men, so they haven’t fucked up as much. [Laughs] We’re now thinking of sexuality on a continuum. People are not only making their own lives but also making their own sexuality and their own fantasies. There’s a greater range in the way that women—and men and the whole human race—can behave. And it’s liberating.

EW: What are your thoughts for women who are working as artists now?

JB: You have to find your own way. If you want to be an artist, you have to keep plugging at it. It’s very hard because you can get a lot of doors slammed on you, which I have gotten. But that’s not always the case. To hang in as long as I did is extraordinary; I don’t think that most people would hang in that long. But it’s important to be true to what you want to say and how you want to handle that. You have to keep moving forward. You can’t just stay where you are. You really have to constantly keep moving in terms of what you want to say, how you are saying it, and reevaluating it. It’s a very tough road.

Judith Bernstein: Voyeur is on view at Mary Boone Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue, through June 27, 2015. Bernstein’s work will be featured in a solo exhibition at Kunsthall Stavanger, in Norway, February 4–April 10, 2016.

Klara (Klara Liden), 10 October, 2009, Berlin, colored pencil on paper. Photo courtesy of the artist and Michael Werner Gallery.

Finding my way around New York in spring, in addition to faces in the crowd, I see familiar friends in paintings. In her intensity, Klara, the recurring subject of Elizabeth Peyton’s latest exhibition at Michael Werner Gallery, eerily gazes out of the walls in a confounding way. I have followed Peyton’s work for years, so I know I have seen the angles of Klara’s face before. As I walk along the walls of the small, traditional space, it seems that Peyton has encapsulated that same uneasy instant before a face is assigned as friend or foreigner. The tone is one of apprehensive intimacy, like being caught walking in on a person’s very private conversation. In a style that is reminiscent of David Hockney’s 1970s figure drawings, Klara’s face is often carefully, precisely drawn. Klara’s androgynous features, short hair, and simple garb compound the peculiarity of her smoldering stare, and, as with much of Peyton’s work, if we didn’t know the gender of the subject, it could bend either way; the beauty in the work lies in its compounded sexual ambiguity.

Klara, 2012, Oil on aluminum veneered panel. Photo courtesy of the artist and Michael Werner Gallery.

Peyton is an artist for which I harbor mixed feelings. She is a lovely colourist, but her well-known portraits and still lifes can be consistently mediocre. It is telling that her works are often referred to as illustrations of modern life, which, fortunately for the works, portray particularly glittery bohemian celebrity subjects in a non-offensive style.  Perhaps the fact that she works primarily in small scale can also entice curators to show too many works instead of a selection of her strongest.

Applaudably, Michael Werner has culled an interesting and varied collection of Peyton’s works, none of which harbor the flatness of some of her well-circulated paintings, which can be heavy in paint and thin in complexity. Not to say her flatness isn’t useful. The often-compared-to Alex Katz successfully captures atmosphere in his figure works with simple lines and flat planes of colour, and Peyton comes close to this at times. What Michael Werner does is play on Peyton’s best strength: her ability to capture a sense of intimacy in her portraiture. These works are a bit more thoughtful than most, and as group, tell a particular story that is appropriate for the intimate and warm gallery space.

Klara, 2010, watercolor on paper. Photo courtesy of the artist and Michael Werner Gallery.

Though the subject is repeated again and again,  there is endless variation in style. In exception to the tortured stare of many of the works, there is a runny, watercolor sketch of Klara asleep in a cloud of soft hues. Watery, uncontrolled paint flows down the paper, echoing a hallucinatory dream state.

Wandering downtown, I run into Peyton’s familiar angular faces again in the West Village, at the artist’s second exhibition at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. The concrete-laden space is cavernous compared to Michael Werner’s gallery. Big, white space is always sexy, and the West Village itself is a great entry hall to the glamour that Peyton presents. The glass gallery doors lead me into a more familiar view of what Peyton has shown in the last few years. There is a cross-section of her work sprinkled along the walls: watercolor, acrylic, oil on paper, and this time, a variety of faces. These faces are familiar in that many are famous: singers, rock stars, artists, actors, and even the President. No one can deny the cool factor in Peyton’s work, and the sexy, hip gallery lends itself well to the overall character of her practice. Sadly, the small works get a bit lost in the massive space.

At the exhibition at Gavin Brown, Peyton has seemingly attempted to capture pivotal moments: opera singers in crescendo, rockers mid-head-bang, or the President and the First Lady in the throes of a kiss. Unfortunately, these critical moments are literally staged ones, and the artist seems only to capture that sense of phony emotion in moments that already feel cheaply wrought. She does much better in capturing the quiet atmosphere of banal moments, and continues to be successful painting her bread and butter: flowers and dazed rock stars. (Honestly.)

Elias Bender Ronnenfelt, 2013, oil on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown's Enterprise.

I do particularly like that in both shows Peyton repeatedly employs a certain push-and-pull effect, created by the detailed face surrounded by looser, sketchier lines of the subject’s clothing and background. Besides adding a sense of dynamism that moves the eye, the selective realism re-emphasizes the face’s psychological import during human interaction. Perhaps it is an overly obvious thought, but it is interesting in revealing Peyton’s concern with the potency of visual exchanges in relationships. After all, in the best of Peyton’s portraiture, the sitter always seems to intensely stare. Whether starting into space, gazing at the viewer, burning with desire, or lost in thought, that stare always implies connectedness or disconnectedness—reminding me of that same moment of discomfort when miscalculating unfamiliar faces on the street and accidentally catching a stranger in an all too intimate locked eye.

Elizabeth Peyton, Klara, at Michael Werner Gallery continues through Jun 15, 2013

Elizabeth Peyton at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise continues through May 13, 2013

Rob Pruitt, tbc, 2010 (detail)

Taking up both Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Maccarone, much of Pattern and Degradation is based on the Amish tradition of Rumspringa, the time when Amish teenagers get to go nuts for a year before deciding whether or not to commit to the whole Amish thing. Admittedly, the Amish are an easy target—they’ll never get through the Holland Tunnel in a horse and buggy to see the show in person, which pretty much leaves things wide open for Pruitt. Hitting closer to home, the show also takes on the tribal nature and herd-like behavior of today’s art world, which at times can seem just as insular as Amish tradition does.

Cementing his reputation as the art world’s premier events planner, Pruitt riffs on three familiar art world occasions: the opening, the auction, and the museum. In one gallery, you can mingle around what he calls “People Feeders,” stacks of tires that serve as lowbrow snack bowls for Oreo’s, (perfectly fresh on both visits I made to the gallery, btw), pretzels, gumballs, and black and white M & M’s. In heavier hands, the tires would have been pain-staking reproductions à la Robert Gober, or machismo car culture symbols à la Richard Prince. Pruitt, however, is much less sentimental than either of those guys. White paint, brushed on the tires Basquiat-style, is refreshingly unfussy. Plus, the snacks made me happy.

The next room loosely resembles an auction house. Dozens of chairs covered with metallic tape face a series of self-portraits, each showing the artist sensorially hindered in some manner—food in his mouth, googly eyes over his real ones, etc…signaling that the works should be experienced viscerally. The shiny chairs faintly echo Warhol’s silver factory and serve as a reminder that Pop Art’s mantra of “liking things” is at a premium here. Conceptual connections can be made to body art or the subjugation of the artist to the market, but over-thinking it seems beside the point.

In the next gallery, Pruitt has installed metallic tape-covered benches and geometric Amish quilt paintings in a museum-style setting. A comment on the enduring and mysterious perseverance of geometry in art, this is not a sarcastic send-up of institutions. Instead, humdrum art-going experiences are made more visually appealing by way of Pruitt’s lively aesthetic.

Questions of taste and quality intermix in this show perfectly. A group of six-legged cardboard box sculptures in Maccarone seem to be marching zombie-like into a giant grid of cinnamon bun paintings. The buns are glazed in a way that hilariously evokes Sol Le Witt, except without Conceptualism’s need for mathematical justification.

Although Pruitt has a penchant for self-mythologizing, this is Dude Art of the lightest kind. While seemingly about getting wild, this show doesn’t glamorize party detritus or bad boy behavior. Where many male artists valorize their fetishes through irony, Pruitt is actually funny. Much like the current trend toward restaurant-quality stoner food that celebrates flavor over pretense, the bar room humor of Pruitt’s work is so rooted in visual satisfaction that it passes as the new high brow.