History is a plaything for M. Louise Lulu Stanley, deeply meaningful, endlessly fascinating, devious and subject to revision. She imaginatively retells old stories in modern guises, finding human nature in allegories recast as contemporary commentary. Stanley says, “I am interested in aggressive behavior by women.” Humor is a weapon, slashing through cliché and prejudice while acknowledging both society’s cruel cuts and our complicity in the story of gender wars. Mischief on her mind, the West Coast artist Stanley (b. 1942) fed off the “bad art” rebel aesthetics of 1970s San Francisco as she painted her way through art history, feminist politics and satirical space. “Humor is the catalyst and the bridge to darker, more troubling matters,” comments the artist who draws on antiquity, kitsch and current affairs. Her sharp elbows create a thematic path from large scale work to picket signs.
Prolific, working on big canvases as often as sketchbooks and posters, Stanley comes from a generation largely omitted from art history, born a bit too early to benefit from the art world’s retrospective harvesting of neglected women’s work. No mind, she has skewered a few art critics in her paintings, from Great Moments in Art History (2007) where the critic contemplates a gallery of female bottoms, surrounded by cigarette butts, to a take on the Judgement of Paris (2005) where three statuesque nudes hold up paintings the viewer can’t see. Stanley sometimes appears as a whimsical avatar clad in French mariner’s jersey and green toreador pants as the Archetypal Artist. This reminds us that the legacy of art history—the way our brain has been inspired and colonized by the certified great painters— is also inevitably processed through our own eyes—culture being that crazy amalgam of past, present, received wisdom, and dissident insight. Now 82, Stanley stills radiates impish energy as in her self-portrait of 2017.
In Stanley’s paintings, allegories develop new story lines where women grab front and center. In Jupiter and Io (2008), the horny god appears as a cloud of steam from the iron held by a blowsy middle-aged woman clad only in her slip. A barking dog underlines the friction between humdrum laundry and the unwelcome intrusion of gods meddling in human affairs. A parable of fallen aristocracy stages decay in the grandeur of the villa Valmarana with its Tiepolo frescoes. A once wealthy lady irons in her palazzo so meagerly wired that a tangled extension cord snakes out from plugless walls.
In Garage Sale (after Giotto, 1996), Stanley features shopping saints who fondle religious tchotchkes sold by a tonsured monk. Viewers will discern the canny papal political operative roasting heretics on the grill, portrayed as a drowsing Pope Innocent X who supervises the yard sale.
Stanley often creates brazen women in ‘40s dresses who suck up all the air in the room. Take for example Seven Deadly Sins (1999), where Lust undresses a slutty Sloth and Avarice pickpockets Envy. Meanwhile, Gluttony appears in the background as feet with lowered panties under a toilet door. This painting has a predella featuring their purses, challenging the viewer to match the sin with the purse. Danae and the Shower of Gold (2021) features a putto pissing coins on a recumbent nude, instead of the Zeus figure in Rembrandt’s original Danae. In Anatomy Lesson (2003), the artist’s avatar dances with a handsome anatomical drawing, as a skeleton taps the gent on the shoulder for his turn. Stanley’s painterly skill is casually deployed in the color and movement of the class room bacchanal. The dancing gal is just one of Stanley’s many sexy, self-confident, boisterous women flaunting their freedoms. Stanley’s ease with the brush makes these biting renditions float effortlessly in the space of Great Master rhetoric and contemporary debates.
Working with artist welder Vickie Jo Sowell and lighting designer Jeremy Hamm for an installation, Stanley created 16 jaunty characters called Neighborhood Convergence in an abandoned space beneath the Powell St. overpass in Emeryville, CA. The public sculpture group, including a fond dad, kids, pup, the painter’s avatar and a whizzing guy in a wheelchair, have been neglected by the city and Department of Transportation since its debut in 2004. There is hope for rehabilitation: as with so many public sculptures, the pieces are popular but not always kept in good shape.
Created for Stanley by her favorite Florentine bookseller, Stanley’s handmade journals start with a self portrait then proceed with marvelous sketched and painted details from her journeys. Elaborate interiors, architectural features, crowd scenes, excerpts from paintings and quick portraits fill the pages of each unique visual diary. Stanley made many of these journals when she led Art Lovers’ Tours through Italy, France, Spain and England, narrating art history as she guided artists who painted and sketched their way through famed galleries and neighborhoods.
Stanley is a long time activist who creates unique picket signs. In one painting turned into a picket sign, angry women beat up abusive men—be they bad bankers or mendacious Supreme Court nominees —with their pocketbooks. And many signs roast Trump as “The Emperor with No Clothes” or “Bad Sad” Trump with a devil whispering in one ear, and a bound and gagged angel facing the other ear.
Our screwy politics, soul-crushing social order and the archives of art history continue to feed Stanley’s fertile imagination. Her classical send-up Snake Oil (2007), featuring an entrepreneurial Eve selling her nostrums at the gates of Paradise, is a highlight at this year’s San Francisco Art Fair. Stanley will be featured in George Adams Gallery booth at the ADAA’s Art Show, Oct. 30 to Nov. 2nd. Anglim/Trimble represents Stanley in San Francisco. G&S
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