I like a lot of the work on her site more than this one above (though this one’s good too). Lots of nice, heavy paint strokes, and strange surfaces / mixed media.
dara and i went to undergrad and grad school together, and she is a kick-ass painter. she is often compared to being a mixture of vuillard and paula rego. which makes sense.
she also does some great stuff with materials, incorporating wax, layered paper, and metal leaf into the paintings. for the show she was recently in, in NYC for the the Joan Mitchell Grant, she did a large painting, lined with tiny predellas of cats. In the tiny paintings, she has been using gouache along with the leaf, and because of their intricacy and specificity, they offer a really nice counterpoint to the larger paintings, which tend to be much more aggressive and broad in paint application.
also, i enjoy her humor and her ability to poke fun at herself in the paintings. they are unabashedly personal; sometimes nearly like journal entries… while still appealing to pretty basic truisms.
i ask not just to provoke Norbert, but because we’ve never had much of an involved discussion about influence or confluence. waay back with my Logan Grider post, there was some discussion of originality. but i wonder if there’s any room to pick up and discuss more.
it’s a solid argument that originality is a myth (i’d love to see one of you paint an allegorical figure of originality, what would that look like?). on the other hand i think we’d all agree that there is such a thing as being overly influenced. anybody got a good system for drawing the line?
for the record, i’d want to say that Soutine is more relevant to Engler’s work. it seems like Rego is more likely to force the materials and narrative elements into the physical forms she needs to create. Engler, like Soutine, seems to let the material dictate the image to a greater extent. Maybe a small difference but definitely a different expression.
great question chris. for me, the issue hinges on the notion of investigation. if a person is simply affecting the facture, subject matter, or overall direction of someone else without real investigation (and an honest person will know if they are or not), i’m going to say that’s more sycophantic mimicry than true personal interest, dedication, and intuitive progression.
given your question (and taking a little cue from sam’s last post) i’ll promote a show i’ll be in with a few other artists who might be familiar to the MWcapacity posters and lurkers. it’s titled “following the leader: mulling over tradition, influence, and affiliation.” in it, myself and three others present their take/non-take on the theme. you can see the work and read some statements about it here: http://www.gillockgallery.org/
(not all of the artists have thoughts up, but i really enjoyed n.c. mallory’s short text on influence – check it out)
Norbert, I love your work and I was looking forward to having you in the Follow the Leader show.
You all need to look at the work of Anthony Ackrill. Here is his statement:
I’m not one to intellectualize about my pictures and try to explain what I do. If I were to think about it too much and try to nail down where it is that my pictures come from, or why, it would destroy the mystery that is in it for me-then they might not come to me anymore.
This guy is sincere and honest.
I admire painters who can write but I also think that Ackrill makes an important point.
bringing it back to dara for a minute,
you might also through gwen john into the mix.
it’s funny that no one is bringing up schiele or kokoshka. but i know that dara was more aware of these male painters at an earlier stage in her painting career than she was of the female painters everyone is mentioning. and she’s been consistently using these types of forms, gestures, and material handling in her work since she began painting…so they are certainly not affected…more just things she does.
i think a lot of what we are cluing into is the expressive use of the morphology in a way that illuminates it as a primary type of symbol. and these particular types of distortions, and especially the unidealization of the body, often present themselves in work done by female artists, across many media (spero, kiki smith, celia paul, saville, modersohn becker, cavener stichter etc.)
and then there’s ron mueck …
Influence was an issue for me as a student, as I’m sure it was for many of us. First I tried to avoid making anything that looked too similar to the work of my heroes but I realized that I wasn’t getting anywhere by doing that. So I decided to indulge in my influences in order to better understand them and hope that I eventually moved beyond them. I think this is a good attitude as long as your interests are widespread and varied. Your mind blends them all up together and out comes something that I would call original.
Also, I think Dara’s paintings reveal much more in person. In reproduction you see the image more than the materiality of the paint, and the metallic stuff never translates well into a static image.
interesting discussion.
I didn’t have an agenda with my comment…I just thought, “these really remind me of Paula Rego.” We are all influenced by work that we see, know and admire.
I like a lot of the work on her site more than this one above (though this one’s good too). Lots of nice, heavy paint strokes, and strange surfaces / mixed media.
[...] The paintings of Dara Engler. [...]
Well, C-Monster digs it, and I dig it. Don’t know what’s holdin’ the rest of you back.
Really cool. Reminds me of Vuillard a bit.
dara and i went to undergrad and grad school together, and she is a kick-ass painter. she is often compared to being a mixture of vuillard and paula rego. which makes sense.
she also does some great stuff with materials, incorporating wax, layered paper, and metal leaf into the paintings. for the show she was recently in, in NYC for the the Joan Mitchell Grant, she did a large painting, lined with tiny predellas of cats. In the tiny paintings, she has been using gouache along with the leaf, and because of their intricacy and specificity, they offer a really nice counterpoint to the larger paintings, which tend to be much more aggressive and broad in paint application.
also, i enjoy her humor and her ability to poke fun at herself in the paintings. they are unabashedly personal; sometimes nearly like journal entries… while still appealing to pretty basic truisms.
Good stuff…but Paula Rego for sure – -
why “but Paula Rego…”?
it sounds like a loaded phrase when you use it that way.
i ask not just to provoke Norbert, but because we’ve never had much of an involved discussion about influence or confluence. waay back with my Logan Grider post, there was some discussion of originality. but i wonder if there’s any room to pick up and discuss more.
it’s a solid argument that originality is a myth (i’d love to see one of you paint an allegorical figure of originality, what would that look like?). on the other hand i think we’d all agree that there is such a thing as being overly influenced. anybody got a good system for drawing the line?
for the record, i’d want to say that Soutine is more relevant to Engler’s work. it seems like Rego is more likely to force the materials and narrative elements into the physical forms she needs to create. Engler, like Soutine, seems to let the material dictate the image to a greater extent. Maybe a small difference but definitely a different expression.
…and I might as well namecheck Alice Neel, too.
great question chris. for me, the issue hinges on the notion of investigation. if a person is simply affecting the facture, subject matter, or overall direction of someone else without real investigation (and an honest person will know if they are or not), i’m going to say that’s more sycophantic mimicry than true personal interest, dedication, and intuitive progression.
given your question (and taking a little cue from sam’s last post) i’ll promote a show i’ll be in with a few other artists who might be familiar to the MWcapacity posters and lurkers. it’s titled “following the leader: mulling over tradition, influence, and affiliation.” in it, myself and three others present their take/non-take on the theme. you can see the work and read some statements about it here: http://www.gillockgallery.org/
(not all of the artists have thoughts up, but i really enjoyed n.c. mallory’s short text on influence – check it out)
Thanks for the post Matt. Intuitive progression. Why does this sound so familiar?
Norbert, I love your work and I was looking forward to having you in the Follow the Leader show.
You all need to look at the work of Anthony Ackrill. Here is his statement:
I’m not one to intellectualize about my pictures and try to explain what I do. If I were to think about it too much and try to nail down where it is that my pictures come from, or why, it would destroy the mystery that is in it for me-then they might not come to me anymore.
This guy is sincere and honest.
I admire painters who can write but I also think that Ackrill makes an important point.
bringing it back to dara for a minute,
you might also through gwen john into the mix.
it’s funny that no one is bringing up schiele or kokoshka. but i know that dara was more aware of these male painters at an earlier stage in her painting career than she was of the female painters everyone is mentioning. and she’s been consistently using these types of forms, gestures, and material handling in her work since she began painting…so they are certainly not affected…more just things she does.
i think a lot of what we are cluing into is the expressive use of the morphology in a way that illuminates it as a primary type of symbol. and these particular types of distortions, and especially the unidealization of the body, often present themselves in work done by female artists, across many media (spero, kiki smith, celia paul, saville, modersohn becker, cavener stichter etc.)
and then there’s ron mueck …
that should be ‘throw’…not through…
oops.
Influence was an issue for me as a student, as I’m sure it was for many of us. First I tried to avoid making anything that looked too similar to the work of my heroes but I realized that I wasn’t getting anywhere by doing that. So I decided to indulge in my influences in order to better understand them and hope that I eventually moved beyond them. I think this is a good attitude as long as your interests are widespread and varied. Your mind blends them all up together and out comes something that I would call original.
Also, I think Dara’s paintings reveal much more in person. In reproduction you see the image more than the materiality of the paint, and the metallic stuff never translates well into a static image.
I also think of Soutine (or Schiele and Kokoschka) more than Rego, because so many of the paintings are single-figure.
There’s a different psychological thing that happens a lot in Rego, from there being multiple, interacting figures.
I do wish I could see a few in person, or at least some material-revealing detail shots…
interesting discussion.
I didn’t have an agenda with my comment…I just thought, “these really remind me of Paula Rego.” We are all influenced by work that we see, know and admire.
Comments are closed on Brenda Goodman….she’s an incredible painter. Let’s get that open!
Matt, are you talking about Carla’s blog, Rocktown, IN?
http://rocktownindiana.blogspot.com/2008/08/brenda-goodman.html
That’s my doing–wanted to direct folks to Carla’s original post, since she did the finding.
Hey Sam, I appreciate the courtesy, but feel free to open them up here too.
as long as there seems to be some random non- dara engler related commenting going on…i just want to say:
woo hoo!
mwc just cracked 50,000 views!
thanks, everybody!
My bad…will head over to Carla’s blog.
M