©

LARI PITTMAN

Untitled #60

1991
acrylic, ink, enamel, and lithography on paper
30 x 22.25 inches

In 1991 Pittman created several groups of works featuring owls as their primary character and existential questions as their subject. The owl paintings were made both on paper and on wood. The drawings function as a separate coherent group because of their size; each is based on the same lithographed module of the owl. In both "paintings" and "drawings" of this series we find a poetic use of text inscribed on the surface of the picture.

Each composition features a large-scale owl rendered realistically, with virtuoso passages of lushly detailed feathers. It carries a wide variety of attributes: oversize ears, piercing or deadened eyes, tears. The motif of "69," reprised from the Counting to series, stands in as speech, thought, or atmosphere, while also emblematically providing an answer, or perhaps the answer, to the plaintive questions.

The plaint, "When will I feel whole?" of Untitled # 60 is exceptionally needy. The motifs suggest decomposition: huge bloody tears dissolving the bird figure, melting wax eroding the candle, flames licking the edges of the sheet. The stolidly symmetrical structure seems primitive, as if the whole work--its composition, its subject matter, and its meanings--all represent a deep-seated, basic desire. In this way the most banal of sentiments speaks diverse voices and admits numerous methodologies.

Pittman has used figures of birds as surrogates for himself since the earliest works. One, but by no means the sole, identity of the owl in these pictures is as surrogate for the artist, mask-like but suggestive. The bird in general has rich iconographic potential in all the traditions important to Pittman--Mexican and colonial religious art, Old Master painting, as well as several modernist styles. But more important here is the example of Frida Kahlo, whose combination of magical realism and psychoanalytic metonymy provided a reinvention of the genre of self-portraiture. Large in scale, often cropped at the center like a traditional bust-length portrait, the owl pictures are remininiscent of Kahlo's extended series of emblematic self-portraits. Like Kahlo, Pittman delights in intense detailing and elaborate ornamentation; her unpredictable juxtapositions and animated environments provide him a rich source for exploring the psyche and picturing emotion. From E. Brown, Lari Pittman Drawings, University Art Museum, UCSB, 1996.

Lari Pittman Exhibition		Past Exhibitions		Exhibition Calendar		Museum Home Page