Better than de Kooning Kat. Villa Merkel

»Better than de Kooning«, this title quoted for a group exhibition sounds like a terrible genre joke, because »nobody can paint better than de Kooning«, so it is an ideal title for a group show exhibition. Peter Saul paints during the mid-1970s a series of pictures of women that parodies the »Woman«-pictures (1950–53) of Willem de Kooning. He meticulously imitates the brush strokes and the impasto in a stylistic mix of Pointillism and Graffiti Art, turns up the colour regulator, and allows the abstract-expressionist painting and the women themselves to blend in a »Daliesque« manner, like soft ice cream (see the text »Un Autre Monde« by Marcus Weber and »Ice Creams, Atom Bomb, I-Screens, Data Bomb« by Esther Leslie in this book). In 2008, Saul paints another version of this cartoon-like, neon avatar and calls his painting »Better than de Kooning« …a relief of US reality.

Artists:
Tim Berresheim, Jana Euler, Maria Lassnig, Lee Lozano, Michel Majerus, Dieter Krieg, Katrin Plavcak, Jon Rafman, Gunter Reski, Peter Saul, Matthias Schaufler, Jim Shaw, Amy Sillman, Sue Williams

Exhibition:
Villa Merkel Galerien der Stadt Esslingen: 12/9–15/11/2015

Andreas Baur is director of the Städtische Galerie Villa Merkel in Esslingen, edited and wrote critical essays for the monographic catalogs of Darren Almond, Willie Doherty, Hamish Fulton, Alan Kaprow, Manfred Kuttner, Andreas Schulze, Marcus Weber as well as for GOOD SPACE (2017) and Better than de Kooning (2015) among others.

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