(Blind Jane) (Cain and Abel) (Untitled)
Art by Ted Rabidoux
While I was in Nantucket, I went to a couple of gallery openings. Not to knock Nantucket because I love the island, but the arts scene there - panders a lot to the I-like-this-because-everyone-likes-the-impressionists crowd.
This made me sad.
I like the Impressionists. Good ones. Like Caillebotte, Cassatt, Morrissot, as well as the usual suspects. I like a variety of artists and styles and periods. But I do not like it when people blindly follow the mass' version of what is good, because they don't question what they like for themselves.
I become despondent when people would rather buy a Monet print and hang it in a gilded frame, rather than explore contemporary artists and their oustanding works. It's all just pretending and make-believing - that that is your taste, when it's just regurgitating rather than digesting. If people didn't look into new things, we would have never had the Impressionists; we would have continued to live under the iron fist of Neoclassicism.
So I wandered a bit. Onto Orange St., off of Main Street, and into 12 Orange St. Gallery. There's were very individualistic, very expressionistic works, a bit reminiscent of German Expressionism. There I ran into Ted Rabidoux, whose works I've placed above.
It's vicious vs cute. His work has a very basic feel. The colours are primary, the tools child-like craypas, the subjects very familiar. Yet the result is menacing. Some of his work is sculptural, as in "Blind Jane" of his dog who went blind some years ago, whom he carries downstairs every morning, who seems to look outward in quietude and wisdom, like some canine Terisias. The direct, yet dead eyes has me wondering. What? Are you dead? Are you stuffed? Are you sad, what is it?
His other works are simply anxiety causing, like "Cain and Abel." Whether due to the clever title, or the reduced to bare bones black and luminous white - it works in rousing the same amount of angst in the viewer.
In 'Untitled' - a familiar mouse looks out directly - eyes quite vengeful, nose dangerously sharp, the lack of a mouth makes him even more malingering. Jerry, what have you done with Tom?
That's my formula for art appreciation.
I look for things that disturb.
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