There Be Monsters
Hyde and Jekyll at Bergamot
It was the Dr. Jekyll side of Don Bachardy who came out to hang his portraits at Craig Krull Gallery last month, in what was said to be the show of his career. Bachardy paints from life every day, his facile hands moving through three images: Your Pretty Portrait, one a little bit off, and the third betraying what he really thinks of his sitter in sunken, shadowed glory. One’s Dorian Gray can come as a bit of a shock.
Bachardy’s portraits at Craig Krull were names and faces beyond my ken – and they were the nice ones. Without a bit or a boatload of starfucking or spite, the portraits, though masterful,
couldn’t hold my attention. His abstractions, though, in the front room, were Light & Space wrought in watercolor, their translucent bands evoking the best fluorescent gizmos of MOCA in a sweet, nostalgic homage.
We wandered from Craig Krull on a stultifying afternoon just across the asphalt to Mark Moore, and got all the spite we could carry. There, the “New London School” showed a crabbed, monstrous view of the world just perfect to warm my lack of a heart.
I don’t know enough about the British art scene to point to Dame Thatcher as impetus, or pinpoint it to the Saatchi Gallery and “Sensation.” I could talk about Genesis P-Orridge and the cannibalistic influence, but again, I would be lying. All I know is that everything I see coming out of England is horrid and obscene – in the most delightful way – but it’s probably just the company I’m keeping. For all I know, Great Britain is awash in seascapes of frolicking children and I’m just happening to show up to the right galleries at the right time.
Still, Mark Moore Gallery is filled with fetching ugliness like Richard Moon’s Tyranni, which has a slit-faced smile straight from R. Crumb or MAD, while Pearls takes a perfectly pretty someone – she looks like a typical politician’s wife, and I feel we’re supposed to know who she is – and just with eyeliner and a lack of lipstick zombies her up like Shaun of the Dead.
David Hancock takes his urban aboriginal, punk rock friends and sometimes paints them straight, sometimes sticks them naked in what at first could be a shooting gallery, except the mattress on the floor has sheets.
Gavin Nolan’s portraits are the most unsettling. His Our Madonna Is Not Functioning takes a woman in a headscarf and bloodies her teeth. She looks like she could be lovely, with her gigantic green eyes, but she’s sweaty and sallow instead. She is like looking in the mirror on mushrooms; you can almost see beneath the skin. Madonna feels vaguely racist, too. Is it a slap at Muslim women? With a head but no body and her huge, tarnished lips, she looks like a cracky, post-traumatic muppet, like if Janice had been
gangraped by the rest of Dr. Teeth’s band.
The only nice allowed in “New London School” are the works of Cathy Lomax, oils on paper that have the sheen and sheerness of watercolor or ink wash. They are a series of beautiful black women with strong black hair – and one Asian woman and one white with some big damn hair of their own. In each of the small portraits, such subjects as Minnie Riperton, Lauryn Hill and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio from Scarface are framed and haloed by their fabulous afros. They are walking exclamation points, their earthly bodies perfect vessels for their pride and strength of personality – even Mastrantonio turned away from the doe side, at least once Tony up and killed her lover.
There’s more at Mark Moore – tiny portraits of double penetrations, a lovely series of paintings that are copies of newspaper obituaries of such luminaries as Divine and Peter Boyle and James Dean. It’s monsters and ugliness everywhere, and if it came from the darkness of growing up in Dame Thatcher’s recession – and I’m not saying it did – we’ll be lucky enough to have our own, and soon.
“New London School” at Mark Moore Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., A-1, (310) 453 3031. Open Tues.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
“Don Bachardy: Portraits and Abstractions” at Craig Krull Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., B-3, (310) 828-6410. Open Tues.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Both shows through May 10.
Published: 05/07/2008
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