"Self-made men" at DC Moore - New York - Brief Article

When the topic is self-portraits, it's frequently assumed that women will present themselves in many guises--presumably in contrast to the more straightforward self-images made by men. And that was the case two years ago, when this gallery mounted a show of female self-portraits. But curiously, men portrayed themselves along strikingly similar lines in this recent companion group show. Curated by the critic Alexi Worth, the 54 works included paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings and assemblages by artists as various as Art Spiegelman, Gregory Gillespie, Christian Schumann, Robert Arneson, Red Grooms and R. Crumb. Judging from the evidence, many see themselves not just as men, but also as boys, babies, mice, monkeys, transvestites and clowns, among other things.

Though much of this work was made in 2001, the earliest piece, a crayon drawing by Paul Cadmus, was dated 1985. The stylistic gamut, which ranged from abstraction to cartoon, was evident the moment one stepped in the door. In the foyer hung Tom's Thumbs (2001), a geometric abstraction by Tom Burkhardt, whose thumbs were rendered on either side, as though the painting were a mirror held up to his own face. Nearby, the cartoonist Ben Katchor, who draws for the Village Voice, offered Pray for Surf (1998), a pen-and-ink strip that tells the story of his attempt to cover a canceled Hawaiian surfing championship, and his decision to fabricate the story instead. In the main gallery, Bryan Crockett's marble epoxy sculpture, Self Portrait as a Somatosensory Homunculus (2000), distends the artist's body parts in proportion to their sensitivity. Not surprisingly, he's pinned to earth by a mammoth penis.

Many of these images came from artists well known for self-portraiture, including Mark Greenwold, William Beckman, the Dutch painter Philip Akkerman and the Chinese multimedia artist Ma Liuming. There were also offerings by Philip Pearlstein, Till Freiwald and others. One felicitous pairing matched a 5 1/2-foot-high silkscreen (2000) by Chuck Close with a 5-inch-high oil painting (1996) by Jim Torok, both artists being known for creating images of their friends. Many of the most interesting pieces went beyond figuration. In John Buck's surrealist bust A Captured Likeness (2001), the artist is represented by an upturned mason jar "head" filled with a jumble of carved wooden objects, such as a hand, a corkscrew, a lizard and a woman's shoe. In his acrylic painting Self (2000), Carl Ostendarp becomes a pop abstraction: two curved bands of color separated by a thick black line--his glasses.

Perhaps the biggest crowd pleaser was an untitled pen-and-ink drawing (2001) of a messy battle scene in which every role is played by the artist "Nick" Eisenman--better known as Nicole. In this show's universe, a man can even be a woman--or maybe it's the other way around.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group