My first mature body of work after art school grew out of my struggle to have my work taken seriously and my fear that my own image might undermine or at least predetermine my works’ reception. I did a series of projects exploring myself as viewed through the appraisal of others. In the first of these projects entitled “Wanted,” I asked my friends, all of whom were artists, to describe me to police sketch artists who then drew me based on these descriptions. I did a show of 17 of these sketches enlarged. This led other projects in which, instead of making the work myself, I deployed myself as subject matter for the gaze of others: magazine writers and photographers, courtroom sketch artists, television script writers, Barbie coloring book illustrators, etc. Identity politics was in the air and this work did enjoy some success.
In time I lost interest in this way of working (or not working). I could no longer suppress my desire to observe and respond to the world around me with my own hands. This shift corresponded with my becoming a mother. Having two young children, I was no longer a denizen of the artworld. Although I was living and working downtown as I always had, my daughter was now going to a private girls’ school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. This gave me a portal into a very specific world of Park Avenue privilege that I had never observed at such close range. I couldn’t help but see these real live “gossip girls” as the modern day counterparts of the girls painted by Manet, Whistler and Sargent.
High Society had traditionally been the focus of grand style portraiture. But modernism rejected the old order and its fascination with aristocracy and portraiture was then viewed as retrograde and antithetical to advanced art. Where are we as a culture today in this regard? How are the 1% (to quote the Occupy Wall Streeters) viewed? As glamorous or greedy? Admired or scoffed at? What I find particularly attractive about this subject matter is that it feels slightly taboo. It is the world of many of today’s collectors but perhaps one which they don’t wish to see portrayed in art. They’d rather, it seems, take a vicarious walk on the wild side through the eyes (and works) of the bohemian artist. In this under-depicted-in high-art realm, I sensed an opportunity to observe somewhat afresh. This ongoing body of work takes on the Upper East Side as viewed through the lens of the Society Portrait.
