Anton Kern Gallery, New York

Dorothy Iannone, "On the Continuing Journey" (2009). Gouache and ink on board, 17 x 13 in.

November 2009 Reviews

Target Practice

The Audio Show

Anton Vidokle

Rirkrit Tiravanija

Walid Raad

Richard Long

Song Dong

Dorothy Iannone Live from Italy, It’s Artissima Athens Biennial: Multinational Visions of Heaven Editor’s Picks: Art Basel Miami Beach Preview

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

As the ecstatic sexual-revolution-era paintings and sculptures of American-born, Berlin-based artist Dorothy Iannone gain popularity in the States, viewers are finding distilled, potent wisdom in her newest creations as well. "Lioness," her first U.S. institutional exhibition, which ran from late July through mid-October at the New Museum, focused on works from between 1966 and 1986. I preferred the curatorial tack of the concurrent show at Anton Kern Gallery, which used older pieces as context for a living, contemporary whole, including five paintings made since 2007. The newer works share a palette — fiery reds, oranges, and yellows cooled by turquoise and sapphire blues — and in them Iannone’s characteristically high ornamentation is calmed by flat white backgrounds of thinly applied acrylic to which the artist gives more prominence than in earlier pieces. The result is a confident, graphic elegance added to her powerful depictions of an active present.

Thematically, the physical and psychological aspects of sexual freedom are still at the forefront of Iannone’s work. The Kama Sutra-like painting Metaphor (2009), depicting a blonde woman standing and smiling while engaged with her partner, who is bent over an African vase, continues the artist’s extensive series of sexual portraits of herself with fellow artist Dieter Roth. Her current self-awareness reveals itself in the picture On the Continuing Journey (2008), which bears the text "I sigh and wonder if indeed I will ever move from the view in which I find myself today. But not to go on now is death." Looking at these works spanning 40 years, I saw clearly that this is one artist who always chooses "to go on."

"Dorothy Iannone" originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' November 2009 Table of Contents.