ARTnews, April 1986
IDA APPLEBROOG
APPLEBROOG may be the art world’s answer to Sam Shepard. Her scenes of everyday life - lovers embracing, elderly ladies chatting, businessmen conversing - are startlingly juxtaposed with images of violence and suffering: guns are raised; bandaged heads and masked terrorists appear; rows of soldiers with clubs pose a persistent threat.
Applebroog’s art has evolved steadily since the mid-‘70’s, when she adopted a minimal style and combined it with Pop-inspired serial imagery to create trenchant comments on the human condition. The paintings and watercolors in this large show drew on earlier work. For example, the “Window Series” is an elaboration of the “window-shade” paintings for which Applebroog is best known. The shades are no longer blank but are filled with emotionally charged heads and faces, adding a strong expressionistic quality.
In another series, “Mirror Images,” Applebroog has incorporated paintings that she found in flea markets in the Catskills, giving new life to the throwaway objects of hobbyists and senior citizens. Pull Down the Shade (1985) works particularly well. An amateur’s painting of a female flamenco dancer is placed between the nondescript painting of a man and his mirror image, while above appear an ordinary housewife and her dog. The housewife seems to represent the domestic reality of the man in the painting, while the sensual Spaniard suggests his imaginary love life.
One of the most moving works in the exhibition was I’ve Chosen Cyanide (1985). The piece is composed of five panels. Three panels represent a young girl, a young boy and a college graduate, while two small, narrow panels below are filled with bizarre details, including a woman shooting a rat, a tombstone cross with a feathered hat hanging on it and a female figure with her legs raised in a comical 90-degree angle from her prostrate body. The shadowy figure of a colossal man strides into the foreground. Applebroog has said that the work was inspired by an incident last year in which university students tried to get their school to stock poison on campus so they could commit suicide in case of nuclear war. Applebroog's innocent young victims are thus bedeviled by uncontrollable events that endanger their future. In an incisive and ironic style, she calls attention to the harsh realities of contemporary life.
SUSAN GILL
