3rd of May

Lari Pittman, Untitled #16, 2003.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Lari Pittman.The painting here comes from a series Pittman made in the years just after the 9/11 attacks when the theme of violence (and the response to violence) re-entered Pittman’s work. I think Pittman’s 2003 paintings are one of the most intense, personal, and smartest artistic responses to 9/11 and the post-9/11 tragedies. We talked about them at length on this week’s show.

One of Pittman’s most important paintings, The Veneer of Order (1985) is featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago exhibition “This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s.” The thesis of the exhibition, which was curated by Helen Molesworth, is that the political, often confrontational art of the 1980s had its roots in feminist art of the preceding decade. Pittman’s painting, and indeed his oeuvre, is a clear example of how feminist discourse and art motivated art in and after the ’80s. [Aside: The Yale University Press-published catalogue for the show is fantastic — and it’s 40% off here.]

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