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Lari Pittman
". . . big, visually gripping and psychologically strange [paintings]." - The New York Times
Lari Pittman’s meticulously rendered paintings employ a complex mix of symbols and images to create dense and compelling narratives on love, violence, and desire. Drawing upon design, folk art, and decorative traditions, Pittman’s brightly colored paintings incorporate and rework a range of styles and genres—Victorian silhouettes, social realist murals, and Mexican retablos—to conjure a hallucinatory effect unique in contemporary painting. Pittman has earned numerous accolades in the art world and has been included in the Venice Biennale, Documenta X, and four Whitney Biennials. The first monograph on his thirty-year career, this book will be a vital addition to any art enthusiast’s library.
Lari Pittman’s meticulously rendered paintings employ a complex mix of symbols and images to create dense and compelling narratives on love, violence, and desire. Drawing upon design, folk art, and decorative traditions, Pittman’s brightly colored paintings incorporate and rework a range of styles and genres—Victorian silhouettes, social realist murals, and Mexican retablos—to conjure a hallucinatory effect unique in contemporary painting. Pittman has earned numerous accolades in the art world and has been included in the Venice Biennale, Documenta X, and four Whitney Biennials. The first monograph on his thirty-year career, this book will be a vital addition to any art enthusiast’s library.
- GenresArt
276 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2011
About the author
Robert Storr
214 books12 followersRobert Storr is an American curator, critic, painter, and writer.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 11, 2011
At Last! A Major Monograph on the Major Artist Lari Pittman
Lari Puttman has been bowling over artists in Los Angeles for many years - his huge paintings magnetize viewers to stand in front of these perplexing yet mesmerizingly beautiful for extended periods of time, so full of visual imagery and commentary on social and gender issues are they! While Pittman's work has appeared in almost every significant international 'Biennale' and museums and many of his paintings have been reproduced in catalogues, This book, and the fine commentary by Robert Schorr, director of the Yale School of Art, finally provides a worthy survey of the genius of this brilliant painter.
Pittman's paintings almost defy verbal or written descriptions: each of his works has so many overlays of design, decoration, excellent drawing, rich color palette, and important social comments that the only real manner in which to think through his art is to enter the canvas as though strolling through his fantasies. As his paintings have developed over the years his method of painting has thickened and matured. His early more technically simple paintings were at first dismissed by the casual observer as kitsch - mixing patterns and drawings with peppery sexy overtones and visual statements. But the critics and collectors and curators of museums have always seen beyond the cheeky surface and have acknowledged Pittman's gifts not only as a fine artist but as an observer of our human foibles and fallacies and myths.
Art critic David Pagel once stated 'Think of Pittman's vertiginous pictures of flowers, birds and puppets, as well as pods, fruits and flow charts, laboratories, labyrinths and kitchens, as the impossible progeny of an exotic, hothouse blossom and a common, hard-to-kill thistle. Breathlessly beautiful and tough as nails, his quixotic hybrids combine exquisite pleasure with grubby pragmatism to turn the world upside-down, inside-out and into a place that is a whole lot better than it was before he got his hands on it.' That statement sums us Pittman's paintings as well as any other critic's view. 'Nature and culture are cut from the same cloth. Nothing meaningful distinguishes organic from artificial. If Oscar Wilde were alive today, he would be at home among Pittman's luscious crops, which are as outlandish and fanciful, flowery and formal, preposterous and promiscuous as Wilde's prose.'
The authors, other than the above mentioned Schorr, include Wayne Koestenbaum, Helen Molesworth and Lisa Phillips and their contributions are additive. The reproductions of Pittman's paintings (surely a challenge to any graphic designer and color separator!) are simply splendid. The book is published by Skira Rizzoli and is as fine a monograph as could be imagined. Highly recommended.
Grady Harp
Lari Puttman has been bowling over artists in Los Angeles for many years - his huge paintings magnetize viewers to stand in front of these perplexing yet mesmerizingly beautiful for extended periods of time, so full of visual imagery and commentary on social and gender issues are they! While Pittman's work has appeared in almost every significant international 'Biennale' and museums and many of his paintings have been reproduced in catalogues, This book, and the fine commentary by Robert Schorr, director of the Yale School of Art, finally provides a worthy survey of the genius of this brilliant painter.
Pittman's paintings almost defy verbal or written descriptions: each of his works has so many overlays of design, decoration, excellent drawing, rich color palette, and important social comments that the only real manner in which to think through his art is to enter the canvas as though strolling through his fantasies. As his paintings have developed over the years his method of painting has thickened and matured. His early more technically simple paintings were at first dismissed by the casual observer as kitsch - mixing patterns and drawings with peppery sexy overtones and visual statements. But the critics and collectors and curators of museums have always seen beyond the cheeky surface and have acknowledged Pittman's gifts not only as a fine artist but as an observer of our human foibles and fallacies and myths.
Art critic David Pagel once stated 'Think of Pittman's vertiginous pictures of flowers, birds and puppets, as well as pods, fruits and flow charts, laboratories, labyrinths and kitchens, as the impossible progeny of an exotic, hothouse blossom and a common, hard-to-kill thistle. Breathlessly beautiful and tough as nails, his quixotic hybrids combine exquisite pleasure with grubby pragmatism to turn the world upside-down, inside-out and into a place that is a whole lot better than it was before he got his hands on it.' That statement sums us Pittman's paintings as well as any other critic's view. 'Nature and culture are cut from the same cloth. Nothing meaningful distinguishes organic from artificial. If Oscar Wilde were alive today, he would be at home among Pittman's luscious crops, which are as outlandish and fanciful, flowery and formal, preposterous and promiscuous as Wilde's prose.'
The authors, other than the above mentioned Schorr, include Wayne Koestenbaum, Helen Molesworth and Lisa Phillips and their contributions are additive. The reproductions of Pittman's paintings (surely a challenge to any graphic designer and color separator!) are simply splendid. The book is published by Skira Rizzoli and is as fine a monograph as could be imagined. Highly recommended.
Grady Harp
October 9, 2016
I got this book out of the library after I saw some of Lari Pittman's work online. His paintings are full of activity, a riot of objects, color, texture, and body parts: animal, vegetable, mineral, commercial, pop, dream. And the titles! They evoke a world in and of themselves: "The Scent of a Flower, for a Moment, Makes Eternity Bearable". In the early works, especially, I see echoes of Kandinsky and Miro.
Another thing I noticed right away when looking through the reproductions was Pittman's use of silhouettes, which immediately brought to mind Kara Walker. Who came first? Pittman, by years, and Walker's childhood was spent in California. As the daughter of an art professor, she must have known about Pittman, although before I read Robert Storr's wonderful essay in the book, I had never seen anyone make the connection, nor do I remember Walker acknowledging it. Pittman uses the silhouettes in combination with color and pattern; Walker's are stark black and white, and for Pittman it is but one element of expression among many, not the signature symbol that it is for Walker. Still.
The essays point out the strong influence Pittman's Columbian heritage has had on his art, particularly the iconography of the Latin American Catholic church. A gay male, he is not afraid of incorporating decorative "feminine" elements in what he makes; rather, he embraces them. I was not surprised to discover Miriam Schapiro among his influential teachers at the California Institute of the Arts.
The transcript of the interview with Pittman gives a lot of insight into the spontaneity and organic growth inherent in his process, and his feelings about following his own muse rather than the fashions of the art world.
That he is not as well-known as other artists of his generation is a mystery to me. He has been included in group exhibitions at the Whitney, and had a solo show at the Hammer Museum in LA in 1996, but it seems more than past time for a major museum retrospective. These are huge paintings, and I think they need to be experienced live and in concert, not just in the pages of a book. The new Whitney would be a perfect setting.
Another thing I noticed right away when looking through the reproductions was Pittman's use of silhouettes, which immediately brought to mind Kara Walker. Who came first? Pittman, by years, and Walker's childhood was spent in California. As the daughter of an art professor, she must have known about Pittman, although before I read Robert Storr's wonderful essay in the book, I had never seen anyone make the connection, nor do I remember Walker acknowledging it. Pittman uses the silhouettes in combination with color and pattern; Walker's are stark black and white, and for Pittman it is but one element of expression among many, not the signature symbol that it is for Walker. Still.
The essays point out the strong influence Pittman's Columbian heritage has had on his art, particularly the iconography of the Latin American Catholic church. A gay male, he is not afraid of incorporating decorative "feminine" elements in what he makes; rather, he embraces them. I was not surprised to discover Miriam Schapiro among his influential teachers at the California Institute of the Arts.
The transcript of the interview with Pittman gives a lot of insight into the spontaneity and organic growth inherent in his process, and his feelings about following his own muse rather than the fashions of the art world.
That he is not as well-known as other artists of his generation is a mystery to me. He has been included in group exhibitions at the Whitney, and had a solo show at the Hammer Museum in LA in 1996, but it seems more than past time for a major museum retrospective. These are huge paintings, and I think they need to be experienced live and in concert, not just in the pages of a book. The new Whitney would be a perfect setting.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews