Time Away

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Co-opting the work of artists—all male—from throughout Western art history for her own use, Zuckerman uses quotation to rescue art history’s muses from their places of submission, enabling these former objects of desire to claim agency in new environments designed especially for them. No longer the seamless beauties of their original contexts, they are pieced-together Frankenstein figures that shake the ground they walk on and unsettle viewers with their open-mouthed smiles, wide eyes, and flying hair. Zuckerman’s paintings and sculptures are satire, parody, and travesty all at once—pastiches of decorative motifs, landscape passages, body parts, and background and foreground elements that denounce the power structures they reference while also paying homage to their visual lineage. Zuckerman’s art is strongly rooted in artistic practices old and new—Dada and the readymade, Pop art, pastiche, and the many forms of appropriation art. Yet she also takes from popular culture, incorporating elements ranging from Disney cartoons to the most banal of images taken from Google image searches—a gold hoop earring, carnival flags, a blonde ponytail. Such fusions of art and broader visual culture have a long tradition—think of the work of Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Kehinde Wiley, and Robert Colescott, to name just a few. Hannah Hoch’s dismemberment and reconstruction of images in her pioneering photomontages, aimed at promoting agency among women, is nearly a century old. What is unprecedented in Zuckerman’s practice is her unabashed plundering of the work of Western male masters and her facility at integrating that imagery into compositions that speak to the present day. Embodying what Zuckerman describes as a “celebration of not quieting down,” the composition of 'Time Away' offers dizzying variety but is carefully combined to achieve balance while including elements of surprise. 'Time Away' is a monumentally-sized three-panel painting based on the composition of the painting Nudes in a Landscape (1906-1918) by Spanish Post-impressionist painter Francisco Nicolás Iturrino González (1864 –1924). Fused with the composition of Matisse’s 'Bathers by a River' (1909-1917), four nude female figures in the foreground are framed by Renaissance-era architectural columns and dotted with a menagerie of Disney bluebirds, a Lichtenstein brushstroke, Wayne Thiebaud delectables, a Cezanne apple, and Picasso flourishes. The flat blue figure is inspired by the work of 20th century painter Bob Thompson. The bodies are deconstructed and pieced together with parts from Picasso and Carroll Dunham and Zuckerman’s own paintings. Imperfections and vulnerabilities are exaggerated, and the figures’ over-the-top exuberance taps into what the artist describes as a longstanding societal discomfort not just with women’s display of emotion, but also with women’s assertion of agency. “They are grotesque and even monstrous, but also seductive,” says Zuckerman, “and I think they tap into a fear of being attracted to something that’s aggressive.” Pixelated areas serve to slow down momentum within the composition while playing with the idea of image resolution and commenting on the arbitrary nature of censorship. Teardrops relate to Picasso’s Weeping Woman, while large painted pixels create windows to the background utilizing a Photoshop aesthetic. Aside from the colossally-scaled paintings Zuckerman produced during a residency at the Rubell Family Foundation, 'Time Away' is one of the most ambitious paintings Zuckerman has made to date. It incorporates a wide range of art historical and popular culture references and features all of the signature elements of the series of paintings she created for Pirate and Muse, which are intentionally repeated from work to work. The Akron Art Museum has a history of committing to artists it has shown early in their careers who have gone on to have significant careers and influence subsequent generations of artists, including Cindy Sherman, Adam Fuss, Robert Colescott and Mickalene Thomas. While we cannot predict the trajectory of Zuckerman’s career with certainty, she has already shown a promising evolution in her work and is continually growing artistically. Through her process, Zuckerman embodies an-of-the-moment embrace of technology, the internet and social media that mirrors the way she—and many others—inhabit our world. The work, while offering a glimpse into early 21st century use of media in painting for future generations, will endure through its strong composition and the challenging questions it poses about power and representation as it pertains to the depiction of women in art and popular culture. The work would relate to Mickalene Thomas’s 'Girlfriends and Lovers' (2008), a group portrait of four women that incorporates elements of art history and popular culture. Sylvia Sleigh’s depiction of the artist Cynthia Mailman as Sheherezade and Elaine Shipman: Legend show a woman artist depicting nude females in the 1970s. 'Time Away' would be among few largescale paintings by women in the museum’s collection.