ARTnews, January 1990

IDA APPLEBROOG

The loss of self- through incarceration; through aging; through adherence to restrictive social, moral, or religious codes; through desensitization to the pain all around us- forms the thread connecting Ida Applebroog’s chamber of horrors. In this body of work images of depersonalization through medicine recur. We see a man in a straightjacket, a surgeon gripping his arm, and a patient in a hospital gown sitting facing away from us on a bed. Institutionalization and the decay of the body are yet two more forces chipping away at our humanity.

As in her recent work, these paintings juxtapose images of a variety of scales, styles, and degrees of pathos, creating a patchwork that never seems entirely decipherable or complete. The largest images tend to be the most emotionally charged, but it is the small, apparently neutral cartoon strips running along side them that ultimately deliver the punch.

For instance, in Chronic Hollow, the primary images consist of a little girl in a wolf mask and a chain of acrobats falling through space against a bleak landscape. These are accompanied by small insets that include a pair of children standing at attention before an American flag, a man reading a speech (perhaps at a school assembly), and a grandmotherly woman sitting in an easy chair cradling a shotgun in her lap. Taken together, the insets describe the horrors of an America characterized by mindless flag worship, indoctrination, and fearful old age. In the end, one realizes, waking nightmares are more frightening than anything we might dream at night.

Applebroog’s reliance on juxtaposition, fragmentation, and borrowed images inevitably brings to mind the deconstructive strategies of artists like David Salle and Robert Longo. However, while they use these devices to suck meaning and passion from their work, Applebroog uses them to heighten a horror that already exists.

-E.H.