Paul MaziarIt’s commonly assumed people today are totally image driven. Examples of this are everywhere you look, from social media and symbol-driven messaging to the profusion of visual feeds that perpetuate the quest for aesthetic perfection. Painting has always been a powerful means of expression and imagination, be it something deep or surface, and its advantages seem all the more pronounced the more acutely mediated the world becomes. With Pleasure, Robin F. Williams’ current exhibition at Various Small Fires owns up to its title, if you subvert the meaning of that phrase.
Each of the 11 large, brightly hued pictures throughout the show depicts figures in various scenarios that balance the aesthetic pleasure of the visual world with the effects of its idiocy. Williams’ best attribute is the dynamism of her approach: formal virtuosity that’s never overshadowed by a keen critical look at society. Her feet are planted firmly on the ground and her tongue is in her cheek.
Robin F. Williams, Alive with Pleasure, 2019, 108×78 inches (Various Small Fires)
Some of the paintings here, her first solo exhibition on the West Coast, refer to famous or else widely-distributed images. Take for example the title painting, “Alive With Pleasure” (2019). On a calm blue shore, two nude women steady a man by his ankles, also nude. He’s in a headstand pose with a dimwitted grin while the two women stand there less than pleased. This oil and acrylic work is a reimagining of a Newport Cigarettes ad from the 1970s, wherein two women in their analogous positions appear jubilant, without a care, totally subservient to and impressed by the dope whose fall they willingly brace.
In Williams’ scene, the faces of the women bear a formal modeling that’s almost cubist, adding to the impression that while the man beneath them is clearly enjoying himself, no one knows why they’ve signed up for the position they’re in, or how much more they’re willing to take. The chosen perspective is bewildering and Williams’ application of paint is a thrill. Her mark-making, with that swirl of oil beneath the man’s head, looks peculiarly hand-drawn, and the vibrant neon aspect of this work’s palette reinforces the strangeness of such a scene.
These cigarette ads, a lot like contemporaneous beer-hawking promotions, figure the product’s relation to sex and sexuality, specifically privileging the male gaze. While the cigarette ad has the bathers clad in swimsuits, all three are nude in Williams’ painted send-up. To me, this is an important leveling with the viewer, an acknowledgment that while old advertising campaigns like Newport’s were in service of misogyny and sex-appeal, a painting can feature nude forms foregrounded by deeper content. It’s a new century and there are all new perspectives to be shared. Her female nudes are much more powerful in their skepticism relative their positions. They could throw this guy to the ground at any moment, probably will.
Beyond social criticism — which is, for Williams, never heavy-handed—all of the paintings in this body of work are characterized by an obvious joy in color and its painterly rendering, with depictions that are somehow both exacting and playful. Williams is versed in her form. I mention painterly rendering, but I hasten to add that she’s not conventional at all. In some places, this work is lushly-applied, textured to the degree that you want to reach out and touch it.
Robin F. Williams, Kool-Aid Sipper, 2018, 36×36 inches (Various Small Fires)
From painting to painting, Williams invokes Helen Frankenthaler, with soak-or-stain on raw canvas, or else the masterful use of color in Delacroix. In certain areas, the paint looks airbrushed on. This application might confound an online view of these paintings. With that smoothed-out, saturated quality — for example, “Ice Queen” (2019) — coupled with the stylized aspect in the drafting of her figures, certain works look digitally rendered. This makes the case for the necessity of the exhibition. Any experience aside from seeing the show in person will simply not due. Having seen pictures of these paintings, I really hadn’t seen them at all.
Other of the paintings in With Pleasure star famous figures and scenes that, when removed from those source contexts, involve the strange or banal tropes of today: vaping, virtual assistants, cold brew — and other well-known subjects: Kool-Aid, pay-phones, patricentricity. “Siri Calls for Help” (2018) hilariously reimagines a scene from the film Rosemary’s Baby; the raving look in the eyes of Williams’ caller keeps the scene filed rightly in the horror category beside the film.
Robin F. Williams, Weathervane, 2018, 60×76 (Various Small Fires)
“Weathervane” (2018) is another painting featuring a figure coming after: the famous gymnast Cathy Rigby, from the cover of Life magazine in 1972. This is the most stunning of the show. Our gymnast has turned her gaze back to the viewer, defiantly, resolutely, in a balance pose upon a roof, as opposed to the beam from the original image. Like other of Williams’ characters, she’s nude and with a physique that’s oddly realistic and alien at the same time. Rigby had sustained an injury that took her out of the Olympics back in 1972. But Williams’ gymnast is self-possessed, poised, unprecarious, unfazed by the approaching coal-black storm. That storm cloud invokes a gloom that’s almost palpable. Here, Williams used a pumice additive to highly texturize this area of the canvas. Every inch of her surfaces are considered, labored over, styled, complete.
The paintings in With Pleasure are perhaps even more relatable due to a motif of female dissent, or a bit of ambivalence. Happy-go-lucky can often come off suspect, especially in painting. There is pleasure to be had in a little subversion. You can trust it.
Various Small Fires, 812 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood; Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m., through October 26; vsf.la.
Robin F. Williams, With Pleasure, installation view (Various Small Fires)
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