Grear Patterson’s Tiki Turner

THE DAILY PIC: A young painter finds the sublime in kitsch.

Grear Patterson Storming the Beach of Normandy 2014

THE DAILY PIC: This huge painting, called Splish Splash . . . Bath Right with the Babysitter was made in 2014 by the young artist Grear Patterson and is now in his solo show at Marlborough Broome Street in New York. I was tempted to dismiss it at first as wallpaper-ish, until I discovered its source: It’s based on a passage from one of the Hawaiian shirts Patterson collects. As a friend pointed out, you don’t expect a cheery shirt to feature the menace of an outrider canoe facing rough seas. The sublime man-in-nature fantasies of tropical tchotchkes have their roots in grand paintings by the English Romantics; I enjoyed seeing those fantasies returned to canvas. (Courtesy the artist, copyright Marlborough Chelsea, New York; photo by Bill Orcutt)

For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.

 


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