Keith Mayerson at Derek Eller

Keith Mayerson's paintings have never been big on craft, but he received deserved acclaim in the early '90s for his acerbically funny and delicately rendered small-scale drawings, as in a series called "Pinocchio the Big Fag," which explores a possible gay reading of the cartoon character's long nose. His most recent show in New York, "Kings and Queens," consisted of a series of large-scale paintings (all 2006) foregrounding his frequently homoerotic worldview through quasi-expressionist, oil-on-linen portrayals of cultural icons that inspire him--a project he's been at for the past decade.

There were, perhaps not shockingly, many attractive young men on view: Elvis '56, in which the picture plane and the rock star are bizarrely skewed; River & Keanu as Mike and Scott in My Own Private Idaho, in which both rakish actors appear as though in a poorly drafted paint-by-numbers rendition of a film still; and The Beatles 1964, in which gloopy masses of multicolored paint represent confetti, and Lennon waves at an audience with an oddly six-fingered hand, possibly suggesting motion. Though Mayerson usually works from photographs, in Love Triumphant (James Dean in a Tree) he offers up his version of a legendary pornographic photo rumored to exist: an almost cubistic, tawny rendering of the actor naked, standing up in a tree, portrayed frontally with a bit of a double chin and a zombielike expression, fondling his erect penis. A range of other cultural figures turn up in other paintings, including Christ, Marcel Proust, Fay Wray with King Kong, the Wizard of Oz cast and Rosa Parks with Martin Luther King, Jr. The tactility of all these images may call to mind Impressionist virtuosos like Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot, if these artists had been badly in need of eye exams and tended toward a palette inspired by Grey Poupon.

Many artists have employed "bad" painting to interesting conceptual ends, like undermining traditional notions of what constitutes art. But one gets the sense that Mayerson's adulation of his subjects is nothing if not earnest. ("Ultimately, the show is an elegy," the press release points out.) One might pause to think about how other artists, in particular other gay men, have compellingly expressed their cultural affinities, and in so doing also interrogated deeper meanings: John Waters photographing his favorite films on his television screen, raising issues of camp, taste, influence and what it means to "make" art; or Andy Warhol reproducing famous images of famous people over and over, begging questions about what mass reproduction of their visages may signify. While Mayerson is correct in his recognition that the mythic individuals he's chosen to render have had an impact on the way many perceive the world, his inept manner of letting us know about his personal pantheon leaves more than a little to be desired.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning