ROBERT MAHONEY WRITER AND CRITIC ON DILLON AND DURER 7/216

                                   

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

 

 

                

JUDE SCHWENDENWIEN'S THOUGHTS ON PAINTING OF "DILLON" 7//16

ABOUT GRACE GRAUPE PILLARD'S "DILLON"

Dillon: Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, oil/alkyd/wood, 2016

This painting is that of an unusually beautiful young man named Dillon. Here is a picture that can only be described as high voltage, a sensational rendering of a young Adonis that burns with an erotic  heat that shocks the eye. Through a graceful rendering of the fine musculature of Dillon's athletic body, Graupe-Pillard's depiction of this youthful man oozes sensuality in an almost startling way. You just can't look away from it.

A golden  skin coloration goes beyond  natural flesh tones to become almost otherworldly, thus adding  to the superior sexiness of the subject. Indeed, the entire painting benefits from high intensity color, such as a seductive opaque creamy  green  that acts as the backdrop for a human rendering that virtually pops out from its flat surface. These exceptional visual qualities came through not only in reproductions but in person as well. Here in a physical  room the portrayal of angelic "Dillon" becomes an almost  tangible being existing on a magical plane of existence, as if one could reach in and touch him; not exactly  in a lustful manner  but as a type of longing to grasp onto that which  is essentially ineffable.

Thus "Dillon" acts as an unexpected homage to youth and brings about the very real acceptance one must have of the very true fact that youth and beauty are eventually fading. Some of the physical appeal of the portrait comes from a human being's sentimental longing for those bygone times and a remembrance of one being in their teens and twenties when they feel almost immortal. Yet at the same time there exists a barrier to the audience  as this young man stretches his forearm close to the edge of the canvas, which in an exhilarating way in real time and space, almost emits pheromones.

Dillon, in a reflection of the times in which he is painted, holds out into space an iPhone to take a selfie a pervasive element of our society which allows people to capture passing moments of their lives  with great clarity. What is unique here is that Dillon never looks at the painter, nor the audience. Instead he is gazing at his own face, almost like Narcissus looking at his own reflection. It is a completely innocent yet ubiquitous gesture  in our "self"- oriented society where, through  this casual yet powerful technology, people get lost in their own passing images, especially the beautiful ones like Graupe-Pillard's almost naive and gorgeous subject. He is all too real, after all.

Jude Schwendenwien

Writer

The Female Gaze, Part Two: Women Look At Men
June 23- September 2, 2016
Summer Hours: . Tues-Fri  10-6 and Fri.10-4

Cheim & Read Gallery, 547 W. 25th St., NYC