Mama Bear untraditional motherhood protector

Result #1

Mama Bear untraditional motherhood protector (A Missing Baby), 1989–90, a diorama of a life-size figure, with a top hat and a head shaped like a cookie, covering her face and chin, with a crown of curls, with a nose shaped like a fair-haired pixie and a cutout of the spines of a giant eggplant on the floor, both of which had been made with the same material, and they had been placed in the same grid. The piece seemed like a miniature version of a life-size doll, a reflection of a somewhat disturbing childhood memory. In this case, the doll was surrounded by a vast, messy construction of construction debris, made up of, among other things, dirt, broken pieces of metal, broken glass, and bits of wire, all of which were strewn on the floor. The work also seemed like a floating, animated sculpture, like some kind of disturbing, dreamscape that could be entered into, if one took the time, to look closely at it. In fact, the entire work felt like a childs idea of play—one where the act of looking is essentially an act of looking—in that the work itself was a kind of play, a play in the very act of being. The piece was as absurd as the living situation it evoked, but one could still play with it.The other works in the show were rather different from the Mama Bear. They were also scattered on the floor, but they were more carefully constructed. The first, a painting entitled The Binding of Dreams and Nightmares, 1990, consisted of three acrylic-on-canvas panels in which the artist had painted two little squares of wood with stars and stripes. The work seemed to be a sort of abstracted drawing, with a single rectangle of the canvas showing through, projecting out of the panel like a leaf, in an abstract landscape.

Result #2

ike a nameless shield: an offering to the presence of the unfathomable that she herself would not know. The same can be said for the work of Michael Krasnow, who (as in a picture by Henri Cartier-Bresson) is both an active and an intimate presence. The visual language of the works in which he appears as an anonymous protagonist in his own life, or the content of his photographs and his accompanying text, is inextricable from the artist himself. In a time when artists are looking more and more like celebrities, this is no small achievement.

Result #3

ike the Newborn Woman, as well as a classic Mothers photo of her own children from the same era, or a photograph of the artist herself in a number of increasingly complex interweavings of works, mostly the rest of the gallery, and a few paintings. In the new work, the artist has embellished the figure with an astonishing array of neckties and a number of other gaudy accessories (including a Gatorade cooler, a backpack, and a baby blue corset), but the overall effect is of a not-too-distant relation to the body, one that seems to be both sexy and simultaneously intimate. Given the way the artist has integrated the body into her own process, her art is, in fact, both more and less than it first appears. Its a half-moment of ironic (but not necessarily ironic) self-knowledge, and it is a work that might easily be forgotten, but that also seems to be something people experience more frequently than they might like.

Result #4

vernacular, making her, as it were, a zany mother, and a bright-eyed, smile-smeared mother, who, in the process, symbolizes the American middle class. One sees the American mother as a very heavy burden, but an invigorating one, to use the phrase that has frequently been used to describe the artist. This is not to say that the mother is necessarily a bad thing. It is just that her presence as a force for liberation from the grimness of the natural world is a bit of a liability. Her presence is just a way to make it possible for us to say, I am alive and I am free. There are ways in which the art object is not the product of the individual, but of society as a whole.In the end, the assumption of the artist as subject is a necessary element of our conception of the work of art. It is a way of saying, Im not the artist, but I am a viewer, and thats something to be proud of. We have become accustomed to saying, Im not a viewer, but I am a witness to something. Such is the case with The Mother, which may not be the greatest art work of the year, but it is nevertheless a masterful feat.

Result #5

Mama Bear untraditional motherhood protector ike that can protect you against the outside world. And it isnt just the meaning of the bear that is at stake in the works, but also the kind of motherhood and the sense of belonging that is so important to a womans life. In Mother and Daughter, 1988, a mother-daughter pair embrace, and she holds a baby, her hand in a tiny fist, as if the mother were her only source of support. In Pussy I, 1988, a woman holds her own pudgy pink body with a pink schnozzak, and a zippy-toothy woman holds a pudgy one, its nose and eyes pink.The theme of the little pink girl and the pink body, and the juxtaposition of the women, is all but lost in the show. The works are exquisitely rendered in a range of grays, and their greys are flat and sometimes opaque, so that, as if to emphasize their materiality, they are sometimes appearingly muted. In several pieces, however, the pink and the pink schnozzak are combined with the green and the green, and a few pictures are just the natural colors of the canvas. The most successful are those where the pink and the green are the only two parts of the equation. In one picture, for example, the pink, which is drawn in a line from the lower half of the canvas to the upper right, is the color of a womans pink-clay floor, and the green, which is a flat black, is the color of a womans bare ass. Theres a subtlety to this picture that makes the pink look almost maternal, as if she were trying to protect her daughter from the black. But the black is too intense for the woman, and the scene looks too much like a sex-club ad to be true.