August, 27th, 2018

THREADS OF AMERICAN REALISM
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“For the artist #StephenPosen, the 1960s were promising indeed. He was a kid from St. Louis who went to Yale and impressed people with his painting ability, coming of age alongside schoolmates who were future art stars: #RichardSerra, #ChuckClose and #BriceMarden. By the early 1970s, his trompe l’oeil paintings of #fabric-covered still lifes were being featured at #Documenta and the @WhitneyMuseum of American Art. #JohnCanaday, citing two meticulously executed canvases that depicted cloth-covered photographs, compared him to Vermeer, in a rave: (His) illusional painting is a “tour de force that revives the quality of magic that painting held in its recreation of three‐dimensional still life on a two dimensional surface before the invention of photography.” But around 1980, with the #art world encouraging him to keep zigging, Mr. Posen zagged, taking a hard turn away from the virtuoso draughtsmanship that had made his name. These may have been wanderings on “side roads,” as Mr. Posen put it, or there could have been a much deeper ambivalence about his own work. “I pulled away from being packaged,” said Mr. Posen. And that was the same year that his son, @ZacPosen, the #fashion designer, was born.” Since then, Posen Sr. crystallized a vision and style that were marvellously modern. His work explored a painterly paradox in which pictorial illusion and spatial perception grapple. His uncanny cut-outs from this period acknowledge a sculptural impetus, imitating draped #fabric and hanging #clothes with an exacting verisimilitude that probes at aesthetic and intellectual curiosities about form, representation, flatness, and depth. These investigations course through Posen’s art to this day.
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#ALESSANDROBERGA | L’ÉDITOR
#SANKTMORITZ #MODEDIPLOMATIQUE (at Vito Schnabel Gallery)