7 Days, November 1989

Ida Applebroog

The title of this show “Nostrums,” refers to medicine administered by a quack, though these amusingly dyspeptic realist paintings seem more toxic than medicinal. I especially like the triptych, each of whose panels links the image of an unhappy Queen Elizabeth with a fat man in hospital bedclothes. Also refreshing in a baleful way is Peristaltic Garden, which poses a hulking man in a bra made of sliced peaches next to a van

Gogh-esque panel with irises (like those in van Gogh’s Irises) being trampled by horse hooves. Applebroog selects fleeting image from the media and the street, paints them in a big primitive style, then cuts up and reassembles the results to make a kind of flash card of bad news. These green-and-brown paintings offer visual bursts of narrative—like protestor-holding-a-placard and man-holding-a-baby-that are intentionally, frustrating aimless. For some 20 years the artist has been throwing incriminating scenes of social dis-ease at us. And partly because her method of presentation is as blunt as the nightly news, we like it.

EDWARD BALL