PRESENTATION: Rose Wylie-Picky People Notice…
Rose Wylie is a renowned figurative painter whose extensive oeuvre is inspired by a wide range of sources including literature, cinema, folklore, mythology and celebrity culture. Fascinated with honest, seemingly naïve expressions, the artist draws from clichéd as well as overlooked visual and narrative traditions. In her large-scale paintings, she effortlessly interweaves her vast knowledge of cultural production with observations and memories that evoke an impartial sense of wonder for everyday life.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: S.M.A.K. Archive
Rose Wylie’s first-ever solo exhibition in Belgium “picky people notice…,” includes twenty-six paintings, ranging from her most recent work to never previously exhibited canvases. Drawings and studies complement the selection. Rose Wylie is recognized as one of the most important figurative painters working today. In her vivid and cartoonish visual language, which is related to 1980s postmodern painting, she depicts subjects from mythology, literature, cinema, folklore, art history, sports and celebrity culture. Wylie draws, in an idiosyncratic way, on both popular and underexposed visual and narrative traditions, interweaving her broad knowledge of cultural production with things closer to home, such as everyday observations and memories. She thus enriches perceptual experience with a myriad affective association, allowing them to vibrate through the oil paint on canvas. Wylie often draws inspiration from her immediate surroundings. This ranges from the domestic sphere – Pete the cat, the plate on which she eats her daily breakfast, the jogger she observes from her garden – to its imaginary, worldly extension, in the form of the internet, TV and newspapers. She distils the visually powerful impressions imparted by this universe of images into her work. In so doing, she also touches on topical themes: a vastly reduced representation of a flower from her garden might allude to global warming, while a glamorous pin-up might be a reaction to the stereotypical representation of women in art history and the mass media. Nevertheless, Wylie’s liberated approach to her subjects and nonchalant mixing of aesthetic codes and perspectives ensures that her paintings are never anecdotal or mere commentary. Wylie is a gifted storyteller, yet her image-making process involves choices that puncture the narrative in an almost Dadaist way. For her exhibition the artist combines a recent painting of a VI bomber (a leitmotif that harks back to an observation from her childhood during the Second World War) with two paintings inspired by a BBC drama about the Duchess of Argyll’s* sex scandal. This unusual constellation of works illustrates the importance of chance, intuition and memory in Wylie’s oeuvre. By employing these elements as artistic strategies, she trades literal reproduction – and the attendant claims of veracity and authenticity – for a far-reaching subjectification of reality. The transformations in Wylie’s work are also underpinned by her versatile painting techniques. Heavily worked impasto surfaces contrast with sections of exposed canvas. Expressive, flowing lines alternate with thick daubs of paint applied directly with a palette knife. The complex genealogy of her work is already visible in the intertwined pencil lines and taped-together layers of paper in her preparatory studies. When Wylie translates such a study to canvas, she also makes extensive use of photography to flesh out certain details. The overall process results in curious viewpoints that defy the traditional logic of Western perspective or in collages of ‘floating images’, the latter of which she compares to Fernand Leger’s isolated objects in space. The artist will often apply corrections directly to the painting, either with a brush or by stapling loose pieces of canvas to the work. These additions reveal the risks, doubts and misgivings that, in her eyes, constitute the meaning in her painting. They also demonstrate, moreover, how observation of the known world can lead to the modelling of a new one. Wylie’s paintings are the result of an intensive process. Their visual language seems to be derived from life itself and its many attestations, without striving to represent it realistically. Rather, she creates a synthesis, connecting the personal with the public, the everyday with the symbolic and the creative with that which is overlooked.
* Margaret Campbell, the famously beautiful Duchess of Argyll, had been a celebrity – and a source of scandal – from even before her debutante days. But she would be remembered for just one thing: the so-called ‘divorce of the century’, which ended her marriage to the Duke of Argyll in 1963. Polaroids, forcibly snatched by her husband and produced in evidence, showed her – naked except for her recognizable signature pearls – engaged in what the presiding judge called “a gross form of a sexual relationship” with an unidentified man.
Photo: Rose Wylie, OUT NOW, COW PARSLEY AND JAPONICA, Feb 5, 2022. 2022, Oil on canvas in (2) two parts, Each panel: 60 1/4 x 72 inches 153 x 183 cm, Photography: Jack Hems, © Rose Wylie, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
Info: S.M.A.K. Museum, Jan Hoetplein 1, Gent, Belgium, Duration: 26/11/2022-30/4/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 9:30-17:30, Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, https://smak.be/
