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LARI PITTMAN

Untitled #42

1988
acrylic, enamel, and monoprint on paper
23.75 x 18 inches

The series of drawings Pittman produced in 1988 involves a wide variety of compositions and motifs. Like the galleon ships, these have an elastic and fantastic sense of scale, flipping from a distant view of a cityscape to an enormous close-up of eyes. But whereas those romanticized narratives have a grand epic quality, the series from 1988 is precussive and more particularized; the artist calls them "very agitated and grouchy."

Things are actively taking place in each of these drawings. Eyes gaze with great searchlight rays of vision dominating the space; ears hear; mouths speak and echo; bells ring. Each sensorial mode inquires similarly: "What ?!" or simply "?! ?!" The compositions themselves, as well as their inscriptions, transmit the urgency of the query, a desperate search for meaning, for insight.

A miniaturized, distant cityscape runs across the bottom of most of the series, contrasting powerfully with the large-scale central motifs of beaming eyes and clanging bells. It is an imaginary city with diverse elements from the grand tour: towers and onion domes, canals and fountains, palazzo facades and arched bridges. For Pittman, these features signify a generic city--an urban environment rather than a specific place--allowing him to play with the idea of any city, an exotic city, or his own city of Los Angeles in turn.

Untitled # 42 may depict Los Angeles more directly. Certainly the blue "smog" of the lower half suggests this city's most notorious attribute. The pace, tone, and coloration of these works is hyperkinetic, noisy, desperate. This anxiety seems to come from inside and outside at the same time, to be an attribute of the city as well as the artist's suggestion that the pictures have feelings, hopes, and desires too.

From E. Brown, Lari Pittman Drawings, University Art Museum, UCSB, 1996.

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