It's kinda fun having friends in a big group show, you occasionally hear about stirrings behind the scenes. Seems that in The Female Gaze: Women look at Men, Part 2, now up (but not Sats) at Cheim and Read, Grace Graupe·Pillard's Dillon (2016), in addition to Sarah Lucas's White Nob, is garnering lots of selfie love from visitors. Artforum has posted a short shout out to the show on its website, and Hannah Stamler surprised me by comparing the pic to another work, "Others catch them in private moments of sleep or self-love, both literal and figurative, as in Grace Graupe·Pillard's painting of a young artist mid iPhone selfie, hand curled in a manner that recalls Durer's Self·Portrait in Fur Coat, 1500". The fun thing here for me is that I saw that the tattoo on Dillon was Durer's Praying Hands, placed on a chest this is clearly a good luck charm. But I missed the other Durer connection. However, it makes some sense. He's making one of those strange gestures that we all know but can't define (I was intrigued the other night at Blue, a great sushi place in town, when the sushi chef served us himself, and made a proud papa gesture pointing on what was what, with his index and middle finger together, you ALL know that hipster gesture). Anyways. If Durer's Portrait in Fur Coat link has some traction, that gesture in that picture is not simply a blessing. It is a variation on a well known trope of Renaissance portraiture. It is called the pseudozygodactylous gesture. Pseudo because men of creativity and patrons and benefactors basically borrowed from the female portrait, mainly of the Virgin Mary, the breastfeeding expression gesture (see comments below). the zygodactylous gesture, to express their creativity and beneficence. Dillon's gesture has a soft gender-bending nature of that sort, but placed in front of the praying hands it is like it is also saying, the love is over there, in the selfie.Very intriguing selfie. By the way, no surprise to me, when Graupe·Pillard does portraits, most of time it is all about the hands.
Pictures: Dillon, Grace Graupe Pillard; Durer Praying Hand; Durer, Portrait with Fur Coat (1500). El Greco El Caballaro portrait reps pesudozygdactylous gesture; Durer version; back to Dillon. Some connection here.
Robert Mahoney July 2, 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment