Mideo Cruz' Post Modern Pleasure And Other Parodies Of Contemporary Décor 4 Painting

Art review: Decorative art according to Mideo Cruz by Katrina Stuart Santiago, June 18, 2012 I don’t know that we need talk about Damien Hirst really, or get into a discussion on post-modernism, especially in the face of art that can carry with it more meaning than what that curatorialnote allows. And when I say that, I mean it falls back on the artist explaining what he was trying to do, telling the world what his art is about, and quite literally so. Or is this just the state of art when it is by Mideo Cruz? “Postmodern Pleasure and Other Parodies of Contemporary Décor” is a set of five works that carries more weight than its curatorial note. This suite is made up of renderings of the more famous paintings of the masters: Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” (1503-1506), Boticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” (1486), Vincent Van Gogh’s “Portrait of the Artist” (1889), Rene Magritte’s “The Son of Man” (1964), and Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl With A Pearl Earring” (c.1665). When I say renderings, I mean not mere versions of it—as that would be tantamount to fakery—as these are reconfigurations of the original to highlight precisely both the task of fakery on the one hand, and the unthinking high regard for these “originals” on the other. In the midst of those two things is the task of critique that “Postmodern Pleasure” takes on, by bringing in the angle of taste – the notions that surround the contemporary sense of what is considered as good art. That this is also now colored by the currency of interior design as artistic enterprise, is of course one of the silences that are here. The latter after all is what validates the use of artworks by established and named artists within interior design projects, in the process not only making it (and the interior design company) more credible to clients, but also placing art within terms of interior design, used as it is to “tie the room together” or “add a pop of color.” These are the premises of “Postmodern Pleasure,” where while the dominant image is obviously of a master’s painting, these are taken over by various aspects of decorative art. For example, the use of color to “liven up a space” is in all these canvases, where the “Mona Lisa” is in a pale pink, Venus is against a backdrop of bright orange, and Van Gogh’s self-portrait is against a backdrop as light blue as what he wears. Color and design meanwhile merge together in the proliferation of polka dots across the canvases, as part of the backdrop yes, but even more so as intervention upon the images themselves. The Mona Lisa’s face and the head of “The Son of Man” are filled with polka dots, too, highlighting how these might be of the background on the one hand, but also the foreground on the other, but only and but part of the main image. The use of the polka dots as such decentralize the image that is familiar, making it but one of the things happening on each canvas. And there are other things here of course, other than color and those dots, and how these render depth of the image differently from the originals. For some of the works another layer was used to further distance us from the original works, and our fixed notions of them. In the versions of the “Birth of Venus,” the “Mona Lisa,” and the “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” there was the task of framing that didn’t just allow for shifts in perception. In these works, what was more importantly highlighted is where the contemporary eye is trained to look, and what it is contemporary “taste” is wont to appreciate, if not sensationalize. The face of the Mona Lisa, and its smile, celebrate, yes? But here it is not just rendered empty-but-filled with polka dots. Here, it is also framed against a dank dark red halo, one that’s equally a rendering and critique of the kind of sacredness that’s given that work, this beauty, that smile. The frame in the rendering of Venus on the other hand is literally an empty picture frame, one she holds over her left breast, almost an up-yours to the gaze that will fall directly on the nakedness that’s in this image. That Botticelli painted this in 1468, and that the contemporary eye will zero in still on a body part more than anything else, is a critique that’s in your face the moment you stand in front of this canvas. And then there’s the “Girl with a Pearl Earring” who we have been told is all about those eyes, looking at you from within that canvas, the body in seeming movement away from you, but the head turned toward you, mouth open as if in almost speech. In this version of Cruz’s this image is framed in the background, but more importantly in the foreground, with a bullseye. What is thus the bigger image here looks like a dartboard, whose center is precisely the girl’s eye—the one that’s celebrated and (over-)analyzed, the one that we are made to consider upon viewing this image. Here, without much of the girl’s face, we are forced to reckon with it as object in itself, and in that sense it’s the strangest of renderings, as in the task of highlighting what we have been taught is the image’s center, we are also forced to let go of what else is there. Here is the value of this set of five works under “Postmodern Pleasure and Other Parodies of Contemporary Décor.” It is not merely a decentralization of these major artworks in the face of reconfiguration, nor is it even ultimately about these works. Across these five works it seems that this is really a critique of the current predisposition to consume art in the particular ways that global capital have dictated, where tourism and interior design, a borderless humanity and unified taste, come together. Where within the spaces of tourism these artworks can only be undoubtedly objectified; and in light of the growing capital invested in the discourses of design, interior and otherwise, art is used as platform for credibility if not validation. And then there’s just this fact: for the spectator in general—and especially in these shores—art is all and still ultimately about decoration. Ergo art cannot have penises on the wall. Nor can it be about the dirty bowels of the city. Touché.