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Two San Francisco Artists
Nina Glaser (Photographer)
/Courtney Peaters (Painter)

June 16 - July 12, 2000
Tues - Sat: 12-6PM;
Or by Appointment

David Leonardis Gallery
1352 North Paulina
Chicago, Illinois 60622
Telephone: 773/ 278-3058
http://www.dlg-gallery.com

Courtney Peaters: Paintings

Twentieth century Urban Folk Art -- a first impression, but perhaps not so far off. In the Twentieth century, at least in the West, naif and sophisticate meld well. We are a world of cities, and becoming ever more so. It is our future, as individuals and as a species. The paintings of Courtney Peaters, a San Francisco artist, are lively, domestic; they speak in an urbane and commercial idiom, and offer a Norman Rockwell humanness obsessed with pets and expressed in a direct and campy style. They are part of "Two San Francisco Artists: Nina Glaser/Courtney Peaters," the current exhibition at David Leonardis Gallery, Chicago, which runs until July 12, 2000. This exhibition draws one to consider our current time and its imaging: the daily lives we live, and how we represent them. But above all, the paintings of Courtney Peaters are a free-flight bit of fun.

Favorite Cousins, an oil on canvas (12"x16"), is a point at which to start: it exemplifies Peaters's style, and focus. Rendered in direct, 'advertising color,' Favorite Cousins centers on the dogs. Two nearly identical canines, akin to the RCA Victrola mascot, or a Buster Brown mutt, perch upon the padded chairs of what could be a causal cinema, or a church or community meeting. That only their chairs are bright patchworks of raw color exemplifies Peaters's assimilation of commercial techniques. They are highlighted from the duller grey seatings; coyly perplexed in gaze and emblematic of spontaneous first encounter. All these are traits which link both commercial art and folk expression.

Prior to the Eighteenth century's splitting of 'High' and 'Low' art, art, commissioned, commercial or naive, crossed and intertwined. The world of cities and of folk coexisted and differed primarily in resource and ability. It shares in what art critic, Henry Geldzahler, noted of 'Pop Art' in the current age: "Pop Art is a new two-dimensional landscape painting, the artist responding specifically to his visual environment", adding:

"We live in an urban society, ceaselessly exposed to mass media. Our primary visual data are for the most part secondhand. Is it not then logical that art be made out of what we see? Has it not been true in the past?

In "A symposium on Pop Art" in Pop Art: A Critical History (University of California Press: 1997).

To landscape painting, one may easily add 'still life.' And Nancy Marmer noted:

"...there are a number of artists on the West Coast (and this may include some of the most advanced work now being done in California) whose style, rather than subject, has been influenced by what might be called a Pop stance."

[In Pop Art, Ed. Lucy Lippard (Thames and Hudson: 1994)].

High Society (9"x12") clearly betrays a 'mass media' idiom -- Marmer's 'Pop stance' -- put to service of the middle-class domestic milieu. Here, in the idiom of expression -- somewhat as in human relations with domestic pets -- a viewer oscillates between the naive and propinquitous, and a patronizing ironicalness. Peaters plays with image of the pet dog as an element involved with, but nonetheless outside, social conventions or restraints. Dogs are like that: they disregard niceties and posted signs, etiquette and dignity... or they exaggerate human-like neuroses, ticks and foibles. If there are whimsical eccentricities in Peaters's paintings, the dogs indulge in what people blissfully obey, unawares and accepting. There is a pleasure in viewing this.

The pervasive ambience of popular image in Peaters's technique and style are directly evident in a work such as Daydream Doodle (16"x20"). In this work, her stylization most overtly cites the commercial, urban modes pervasive in glossy magazine illustration and ads of the late 50s and the 60s. Daydream Doodle could well have appeared in Life or Look magazine. Lucy Lippard's Pop Art does briefly trace what that book calls 'proto-Pop': Cubist and Dadaist appropriation of widespread, commercial trends; and certainly, Daydream Doodle recalls the work of an artist such as Stuart Davis. One aspect does stand out in Peaters's paintings: they center on people and pets, not product. They are personal, brashly colorful and mostly tongue-in-cheek enjoyable.

"Two San Francisco Artists: Nina Glaser/Courtney Peaters," the current exhibition at David Leonardis Gallery, Chicago; runs until July 12, 2000. A visit to the gallery offers some excellent work, and simply an afternoon of enjoyment.

Finis Part II
Go to Part I
Nina Glaser

--G. Jurek Polanski

Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net.

Editorial Note: Many books mentioned in artscope.net are in print and available through this website's Barnes & Noble link. Of particular interest are the excellent Pop Art: A Critical History (University of California: 1997), and Lucy Lippard's Pop Art (Hudson and Thames: 1994).