At first glance, Moon Birds, showing at the Shane Campbell Gallery (1431 W. Chicago Ave.) until March 15, seems to be a complete departure from the earlier works of Ann Craven. After all, unlike the name suggests, viewers are not barraged with the Audubon-style imagery of vibrant birds or the quick studies of moon phases that she has shown in the past. Craven, however, doesn’t abandon her technique all together; rather, she re-discovers it. Repetition (both within the gallery space and of past works) plays a large role in Moon Birds, as does Craven’s wet-on-wet application of the oils, and her use of kitsch imagery.
At Shane Campbell the viewer is immediately confronted with large, bold, color field-like striped images. Seven 60x48-inch striped canvases, plus one kitschy painting of a panda on a branch, line the walls of the main gallery. A cardboard box of posters (of one of the stripe paintings) lies in the middle of the space. Ten smaller striped canvases, as well as three reproductions of the same panda painting, appear in the gallery office.
Repetition is something well established in Craven’s vocabulary as an artist. She lost all of her possessions, paintings and documentation of her work in a fire that destroyed her Manhattan studio in 1999. The fire, (more so the destruction of all of her works and archives), took Craven’s work in an entirely new direction. She began to explore replication and repetition, repainting all of her old works from memory [1]. No longer did Craven make one of something, she made multiples (in a 2006 show at Gasser & Grunert in New York Craven installed 400 paintings of the moon), or she repeated every painting in a past show, changing only the size of the canvases [2].
In Moon Birds Craven re-invents the idea of repetition through interpreting her past paintings as simple color studies. The image has been stripped from the canvas, leaving bold, colorful stripes that align with the color schemes of her moon, bird, deer and panda paintings. Craven first presented color studies in her show at the Catherine Bastide Gallery in Brussels, Belgium, where she presented a small stripe painting above the main image with which it was associated [3]. This, however, is the first time viewers have seen the stripes on a large scale, presented independently from their original.
The stripe paintings offer variation from Craven’s usual technique in that they are messy and quick (most of them painted in a single day). Other than her consideration for the color of each stripe, little attention is paid to detail, as the stripes are irregular in size and angle, the colors mix and run into one another, and one color drips into the next.
The panda paintings are much more typical of Craven’s style. Each is of the same image, reproduced to near perfection on various scales. Craven masters her medium—both large and small brush strokes are visible, working together to create a portrait that is truly breathtaking. Like the style used in many of her bird paintings, the bright panda pops off a soft-focus, fairly dull background. While I enjoyed the pandas immensely, they do not do justice to Craven’s impeccable technique. Variations in the size and direction of the brushstrokes are apparent, but the image does not show as well as Craven’s parakeets or lovebirds. In her past paintings, the beauty of the brushstrokes was mostly visible in the feathers, and I find myself wishing the pandas gave my eyes more to grab onto.
The panda, however, transforms Craven’s usual kitsch iconography into something with more widespread appeal. Whereas her birds and deer are clearly feminine in appearance, the pandas are alluring on a different level. As the gallery attendant asked to me, “Who doesn’t like pandas?”
Rather than loading her images, Craven employs a kitsch, “greeting card” aesthetic precisely because it is empty. By using such commonplace imagery, viewers are not distracted by the meaning [4]. They can focus on the painting itself—the use of color, variance of brushstrokes, and the wet-on-wet application of oils that Craven champions. Not only can Craven hang her process on the original, but viewers can also discover it through the duplicates, which are not only recreations of the pictures, but of the method of art-making itself.
Craven’s concept of reproduction confronts that which Walter Benjamin discussed in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin claims that even the most perfect reproduction lacks a presence “in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” This “unique existence” he says, is determined by its history and the changes it suffers to its physical condition over time [5]. By producing multiple paintings simultaneously, Craven challenges the idea of the “original.” Of the four panda paintings in the show, it is impossible to say which is the original and which are the reproductions. All four show the indexical quality of the artist’s hand, have a unique story of their creation, and exist independently in the gallery space. None are labeled as the “copy.” Furthermore, Craven’s color studies are reproductions of an “authentic,” yet completely distinctive. They look entirely different and exist autonomously from their originals. They have their own history and presence.
Benjamin also said, “The work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility” [6]. Craven’s posters on the floor speak more to this idea. A technique she picked up from close friend and fellow artist Josh Smith, the posters eliminate the artist’s hand by flattening her brushstrokes. Printed on shoddy paper and “displayed” in the cardboard box they were delivered in, the posters become a glowing example of the cheapening of an artwork through reproduction. The posters have no unique existence, they probably won’t make it past the gray fabric walls of an office cubicle and they certainly don’t show off Craven’s painting. If the posters are said to be an example of mechanical reproduction, then Craven’s duplicate paintings are an example of the finest human reproduction.
Installation is also an important element in Craven’s work. Though not as striking in Moon Birds as in past shows (Deer and Beer, 2006 and 400 Paintings, 2006 are both excellent examples), attention is obviously paid to appropriate use of the gallery space. The black and white stripe paintings (color studies of Craven’s moon paintings) align in the corners of the gallery. The large and small-scale versions mimic each other on adjacent walls. The closest stripe painting to the gallery exit is wrapped in plastic and taped with brown packing tape. The plastic, only present on this single painting, suggests an element of protection. From what Craven is trying to protect the painting is unclear, but the viewer is certainly reminded of the destruction of Craven’s studio during the fire. The plastic may also be reminiscent of the painting’s trip to the printer, as it is the painting that is replicated on the posters.
Repetition and painter-liness are at the core of Craven’s work. While other artists work tirelessly to avoid repeating themselves, Craven embraces repetition as a way to re-discover works and highlight her masterful painting process. Because Moon Birds is a less blatant example of Craven’s common techniques, it forces the viewer to contextualize it within her past shows. The color studies are simply a new way of looking at the old—a re-invention of the painted icon in a consumer driven, mass-produced world. These are images on which she can hang her process, to turn the focus to the painting itself [7]. And yet, the process behind the color studies (quick and messy) contrasts sharply with the intentional, varying brushstrokes of the panda paintings. While both images are “reproductions,” neither seems tightly maneuvered. The wet-on-wet technique allows Craven to create artworks that appear spontaneous [8]; the artist’s hand is apparent while the act of “replication” is hidden, making each duplicate painting even more miraculous.
[1] Barbara Pollack, “You Must Remember This: Ann Craven’s mnemonic devices,” Modern Painters March (2005): 44.
[2] Barbara Pollack, “Reviews: Ann Craven,” Time Out New York 445 (2004): 53.
[3] Ann Craven: Exhibitions, 11 March 2008, http://www.anncraven.com/craven_home.html.
[4] Barbara Pollack, “You Must Remember This: Ann Craven’s mnemonic devices,” Modern Painters March (2005): 44.
[5] Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1969) 220.
[6] Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1969) 224.
[7] Barbara Pollack, “You Must Remember This: Ann Craven’s mnemonic devices,” Modern Painters March (2005): 44.
[8] Barbara Pollack, “Ann Craven at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert,” March (2004).
