Art in America, October 2002

Ida Applebroog

Ida Applebroog has forged a distinctive vocabulary with paintings satirizing the dark undercurrents coursing beneath domestic life; her works project a deliciously submerged violence. In “Modern Olympia,” her 12th show at Feldman, she turned her keen eye to art history, using Manet’s famous rendering of a supine courtesan as her springboard. With multipaneled works in a variety of mediums, all dated 1997-2000, Applebroog explored a web of issues related to the fate of the female figure in art and life.

The focal point of the powerful 14-work show as the oil-on-canvas Modern Olympia (6 x 28 feet) consisting of five freestanding panels positioned like a large screen in the main gallery. At the work’s center is a wildly cartoonish figure, a reddish-pink nude with sagging breasts who resembles a kind of 1940s-style brunette movie star. Rendered in scumbled oil, she reclines cheerfully against a powder-blue background that resembles sky.

Behind her, a ghostly chorus of nudes – sirens, bathers, aged crones – echo art historical motifs in well-known paintings by Cezanne, Schiele and others. They quiver in lyrically expressionist rhythms and seem to represent a panoply of life experiences.

Many are star players in other canvases. Seven seated nudes with middle-aged spread are featured in the Modern Olympia (after Manet). Rendered in thick, schematic outlines over four adjacent panels, these aging dames arranged in a semicircle, stare out with a quizzical, slightly injured look.

Modern Olympia (after O’Keeffe) comprises 12 narrow frames rising from the gallery floor in varying heights, the highest 92 inches; each contains vertical sequences of blurry watercolor sketches of nudes striking girlie-magazine, genital-exposing poses. The works make an oblique, witty reference (underscored by the title) to Georgia O’Keeffe’s blossoms and desert-parched bones, frequently considered to be veiled portraits of pudenda; however, Applebroog’s imagery is not so veiled. The works are on Gampi, a thick Japanese rice paper whose pearl-like hues summon an association with skin.

Six works in the rear gallery, all titled Modern Olympia (after Versace), were also on Gampi, this time pinned to the wall so they sagged slightly, resembling stretched animal hide. Each presents a portrait of a pubescent fashion model-type, mostly naked, except for some scary-looking high-heeled shoes. Each work consists of two or more panels. Across the room was the two-panel Modern Olympia (after Anonymous), in which white-haired grandmotherly figures stand boldly naked, defying convention, casting knowing yet inquiring glances. Here, Applebroog’s rough orange-brown outlines recall finger painting.

Manet’s Olympia caused an uproar in 1863 because, for one thing, the recumbent prostitute boldly returned the viewer’s stare. Applebroog’s Olympias, old and young, also stare back, as if questioning the limitations of sexual conventions – particularly in terms of age. The artist’s visual parables slither deftly away before their exact meaning can be pinned down; they remain, at their core, as tantalizingly mysterious as dreams.

CAREY LOVELACE