“Bodies and Pleasures,” Lucy Kirkman on the 7th Floor Lobby

The 7^th floor exhibition, consisting mostly of paintings, but also housing several small sculptures and a painting/projection, is in praise of, or in pursuit of, pleasure. The title says this plainly, but without it the work would still hover around an interest in the delightful. I’m wondering what kind of pleasure this is. Lucy’s dozen golden eggs sculpture gives the hint that this is a pleasure in the everyday. And for me, the most effective pieces in the show—five small paintings showing the artist’s nude or mostly nude body from the perspective of the artist either in the bathtub or in bed, with housecat or not—dwell in this space of commonplace luxury.

These small paintings are worth taking a look at: Lucy has composed images where the viewer’s perspective is that of the artist’s, seeing her own body lying down. This is an effective strategy, if not an overt connection to a tradition of comments on viewing the female nude. If Manet's Olympia acknowledges your gaze, and returns it, in these paintings we are asked to hold the same gaze—in effect, to empathize with it. This is a subtle but powerful move.

In Lucy’s painting/projection, a painted imitation of the figure from the Andrew Wyeth painting, “Christina’s World”, is overlaid by a projection of slides showing different works from art history. So, Christina’s worlds change. This is perhaps a related gesture as the paintings, but more overt at the expense of something (the empathy?) that makes the paintings intriguing. Christina flies through a world of different paintings, but this is a trip I didn’t want to take with her.

I am not so sure if the work depends entirely on a revised feminist agenda. Probably it doesn’t, although it’s certainly there. The major problem for me is not in the strategy, or how effective it is or isn’t, but in Lucy’s take on pleasure. Except for the painting/projection, which may speak to this, the work seems to consciously leave out the provocations of pain and longing, instead portraying pleasure as something still and unchallenged. In reality, pleasure is alive, moved and affected by loss. The exclusion of that loss does a disservice to an understanding of pleasure, and to the work.

Henry