Daniel Oliver
In the central white space of Platonic are two silhouettes. On the left is an outline of a figure sitting in the pose of Rodin’s The Thinker, though its smooth outlines indicate it is not a tracing of a photo of Rodin; in fact Oliver copied a reproduction of The Thinker in a way that makes it look like a kitsch imitation. This icon of modern profundity and interiority is contemplating the other figure: a large bunnylike toy, its rabbit ears ascending high above the thinker’s head. The object of the thinker’s deep thoughts is perhaps the silliest of the silhouettes in the show.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Diagonal Composition makes a similar joke. In a central white area is a mermaidlike shape with a fishy tail; in the gray square above it, a little girl with an umbrella. The shapes are oddly similar, as if Oliver were making an absurdist visual pun. Similarly, in Victory the largest rectangle displays the outline of a famous classical sculpture, Winged Victory of Samothrace. Next to this heroic, elegantly abstract outline, in a much smaller rectangle to the right, is part of a stooping figure in a hat apparently bending over a bucket, a diminutive form that looks positively cute beside Winged Victory. The line created by his neck and hat leads right to the goddess Nike’s wings. We see what one scholar has called “one of the greatest achievements we know of in the art of the Hellenistic age” growing out of something that looks very much like a suburban lawn ornament; through Oliver’s postmodern lens, Greek ideals are little different from mass-produced plastic.
Mondrian, who took as his motto “always further,” wrote that his move toward abstraction was an attempt to go beyond the accidents of a specific object or view to more universal truths. “Precisely on account of its profound love for things, nonfigurative art does not aim at rendering them in their particular appearance.” He saw his art as a reflection of his own time, of the machine age: “The truly modern artist regards the metropolis as an embodiment of abstract life; it is closer to him than nature is, and gives him a greater feeling of beauty.” But he also spoke of looking beyond “the expression of things” toward “the pure expression of relation.” Underlying his attempt to see beyond the particulars of nature, individual objects, and human subjectivity was a broader utopian vision, of art as a creator of “New Life.” Applying the principles he and his colleagues enunciated would, he hoped, help lead to the creation of “an earthly paradise.”
Of course Oliver has a point: the way images are endlessly repeated in our culture, and famous images become stylistic motifs, robs all images of meaning and potency. But is that a good thing, something worth replicating in art? The jokes in Oli-ver’s paintings turn back on themselves, until finally one is left with the chuckle of seeing everything devalued. While his witty images are more complex than the pop culture he takes as his inspiration, the experience they offer the viewer isn’t all that different from a particularly extravagant creche, garish enough to create its own “ambiguities.”
