Sheldon Greenberg: Interlaced Viewings

Sheldon Greenberg Interlaced Viewings Modernism Inc. San Francisco

Sheldon Greenberg Interlaced Viewings

Sheldon Greenberg Interlaced Viewings

July 12 - September 1, 2023

Modernism Inc. | 724 Ellis Street | San Francisco, CA 94109

Eternal Return

By Jonathon Keats

When Antoine Watteau painted Pierrot, everybody knew the type. Pierrot was a clown, one of the most popular characters in the French commedia dell’arte. Watteau’s 1718-19 portrait preserved Pierrot’s sensitive persona for centuries after the commedia dell’arte disbanded, providing inspiration to artists ranging from Honoré Daumier to Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Today Watteau’s painting remains an attraction for connoisseurs visiting the Louvre, but neither Pierrot nor Watteau can compete with Dave Chappelle or Banksy in terms of celebrity. The same can be said of masterpieces such as Jan Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring and John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X. Neither woman has the face recognition of Cate Blanchett or Susan Sarandon.

Having admired these historic paintings for decades, Sheldon Greenberg wonders whether they might gain new admirers if they were to be reconceived as contemporary art. Greenberg’s speculation was prompted by a book given to him by his wife. The Louvre: All the Paintings included Pierrot and many more personal favorites, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Frans Hals’s Lute Player. “I decided, okay, I’m going to pick the works that I really love, and I’m go1

ing to take the part of those paintings that I find really fascinating,” he recalls. Focusing on the drooping figure of Pierrot, the mischievous face of the Lute Player, and Lisa del Giocondo’s unflappable smile, Greenberg critically broke down what he saw and systematically reconstituted it in his own contemporary style.

Greenberg is a realist painter with a masterful command of his medium, a stylistic virtuoso who has spent the past several decades exploring myriad techniques and approaches to composition.

Previous work has seamlessly combined elements of Modernist architecture with the imagery of classic cinema; like Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist, he balances Pop Art pastiche with painterly lyricism. In Interlaced Viewings, Greenberg builds on this capacity to recombine conceptual and aesthetic innovations from centuries of art history, radically reinventing dozens of important paintings created over the past five hundred years.

Although some of the originals are currently in the Louvre’s formidable collection, Greenberg has also chosen masterpieces from museums including the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (home to Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus), the Mauritshuis in the Hague (custodians of Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring), the Hamburger Kunsthalle (site of Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog), and the Metropolitan Museum in New York (the location of Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X, a painting he first admired while studying at the Art Students League in the 1990s).

As eclectic as these works may be, Greenberg has unified them through his use of visual devices carried over from his past bodies of work. Principal among these are his use of silkscreens, graffiti, and mute charts, as well as stripes and polka dots.

Integrated into his beautifully expressionistic impasto brushwork (and often partially covered by it), the silkscreens are especially important on both a visual and conceptual level. Often taking 2

Installation view of You Stepped Out of a Dream (after Boticelli) & Let’s Get Lost (after Friedrich)

Installation view of Gun Street Girl (after Boucher), Happy Dreamer (after Leyster) & You Do Something to Me (after Sargent)

Installation view of A Night in Tunisia (after Gérôme) & Stardust (after Vermeer)

Greenberg’s photographs of palm trees as their subject, they provocatively disrupt the traditional spatial organization of paintings from past centuries. “The trees blow out the whole idea of atmospheric perspective,” he says. “It’s not my intention to have a realistic scene.”

The introduction of silkscreens also upsets viewers’ sense of time, at least from an art-historical point of view. Evocative of Rauschenberg’s 1960s Combines, and enlisting a photographic process that didn’t exist in the era of Botticelli or Sargent, they add a postmodern layer to the paintings.

Self-referential and often ironic, postmodernism has provided artists in many media with a means to remix the past and present, overlaying multiple versions of reality, combining creative renewal with playful commentary. For instance, when Roy Lichtenstein applied the Ben-Day dots of comic book printing to oil painting, he simultaneously brought a venerable artistic tradition up-to-date and reformatted popular culture as a subject of connoisseurship.

The postmodern turn is given a further twist through Greenberg’s choice of titles, which come from popular songs – Pierrot becomes Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right in tribute to Bob Dylan – as well as his silkscreened cartoon characters and playfully cartoonish graffiti.

“Some of those cartoon images are more easily readable than the main composition,” Greenberg remarks with teasing irony.

For instance, his version of Frans Hals’ Lute Player (titled Smooth Operator in tribute to Sade) has the musician performing for Minnie Mouse, his Mona Lisa (titled Sittin’ Pretty in tribute to Bobbie Gentry) has Minnie Mouse’s smirk facing off against Lisa del Giocondo’s smile, and Watteau’s Pierrot shares the stage with a silkscreened Betty Boop. (As a matter of bringing Pierrot up-to-date, Greenberg takes a greater leap than did Daumier or Gérôme.)

7

But it’s the mute chart, which Greenberg renders in mesmerizing patterns of stripes or polka dots, and sometimes integrates into compositions as patterns on subjects’ garments, that most consistently appears in the body of work, and that provides an essential leitmotif. For example, a mute chart stripes a scarf wrapped around the neck of Friedrich’s wanderer, and speckles the dress of Sargent’s Madame X. The mute chart also carries Greenberg’s work back to its conceptual origin. “The mute chart came from teaching,” he explains. “This is how students learn to create a mute by mixing complementary colors.” Through the mute chart, Greenberg suggests that his works might teach us how to see again: to recognize the genius of his artistic antecedents, and perhaps to appreciate the present through their eyes.

Installation view of Stardust (after Vermeer) & Walk on the Wild Side (after Gauguin)

8

Plates

You Stepped Out of a Dream (after Botticelli), 2023 acrylic and screenprint on panel, 56 x 48 inches

12

3 Gymnopedies (after Caravaggio), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 56 x 48 inches

14

Get On the Good Foot (after Bonheur), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 56 x 48 inches

16

Happy Dreamer (after Leyster), 2023 acrylic on canvas, 42 x 42 inches

18

Suga Suga (after da Vinci), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 36 x 36 inches

20

In Dreams (after Chardin), 2023 acrylic and screen print on canvas over panel, 20 x 23 inches

22

Alone Together (after Morandi), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 36 x 36 inches

24

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right (after Watteau), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 56 x 48 inches

26

Spill the Wine (after Caravaggio), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 56 x 48 inches

28

Let’s Get Lost (after Friedrich), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 56 x 48 inches

30

I Put a Spell On You (after Lempicka), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 56 x 48 inches

32

You Do Something to Me (after Sargent), 2023 acrylic and screen print on canvas over panel, 48 x 41 inches

34

Stardust (after Vermeer), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 36 x 36 inches

36

Walk on the Wild Side (after Gauguin), 2023 acrylic and screen print on canvas over panel, 41 x 48 inches

38

In Dreams (after Chardin) II, 2023 acrylic and screenprint on canvas, 20 x 20 inches

40

Beyond the Sea (after Lempicka), 2023 acrylic and screen print on canvas over panel, 64 x 48 inches

42

Gun Street Girl (after Boucher), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 36 x 36 inches

44

A Night in Tunisia (after Gérôme), 2023 acrylic and screen print on canvas over panel, 48 x 41 inches

46

All the Way Up (after Meléndez), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 26 x 22 inches

48

Smooth Operator (after Frans Hals), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 36 x 36 inches

50

Eyes Without a Face (after Magritte), 2023 acrylic and screen print on panel, 28 x 24 7/8 inches

52

After Chardin No. 4, 2023 acrylic and screenprint on paper; No. 4 of Suite: 7 17 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches image size, 22 1/4 x 30 inches paper size 54

After Chardin No.7, 2023 acrylic and screenprint on paper; No. 7 of Suite: 7 22 x 28 1/4z inches image size, 22 1/4 x 30 inches paper size

SHELDON GREENBERG; SELECTED CHRONOLOGY Born Shreveport, Louisiana, 1956 EDUCATION

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1993-94 California College of Arts & Crafts, Oakland, MFA 1985-86 Art Students League, New York 1975-80 San Jose State University, San Jose, BS

2023 2022

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS 2023 2022 2019 2018 2014 2011 2010 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994

56

Modernism Inc., San Francisco Slate Gallery, 101 Second Street, San Francisco Modernism West, San Francisco Startup Art Fair, Venice, CA Susan Street Fine Art, San Diego Modernism, San Francisco Susan Street Fine Art, San Diego, CA Modernism, San Francisco Spur Projects, Portola Valley, CA Susan Street Fine Arts, San Diego, CA Modernism, San Francisco Susan Street Fine Arts, San Diego, CA Susan Street Fine Art, San Diego Modernism, San Francisco Modernism, San Francisco Solomon Dubnick Gallery, Sacramento Modernism, San Francisco Susan Street Fine Art, San Diego Solomon Dubnick Gallery, Sacramento Modernism, San Francisco Modernism, San Francisco Solomon Dubnick Gallery, Sacramento Mike, San Francisco Space 743, San Francisco Sierra College, Library Gallery, Rocklin, CA Solomon Dubnick Gallery, Sacramento Barbara Anderson Gallery, Berkeley Solomon Dubnick Gallery, Sacramento Barbara Anderson Gallery, Berkeley

2017 2016 2007 2004 2003 2002 2000 1997 1996

1995 1994 1993 1992

Spring Exhibition, San Diego Museum, CA Spring Exhibition, San Diego Museum, CA de Young Open, de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA Crocker Kingsley, Sacramento, CA Non Objective, Blue Lane Arts, Sacramento, CA Solomon Dubnick Gallery, Sacramento, CA 25th Anniversary Exhibition, Modernism, San Francisco Mark Jason Fine Art, London Modernism, San Francisco Susan Street Fine Art, San Diego 72nd Crocker-Kingsley Exhibit, Sacramento Wit and Whimsy, Susan Street Fine Art, San Diego Get in Here, Part Two, Traywick Gallery, Berkeley Big Kids Toybox, Solomon Dubnick, Sacramento 17th Annual Bay Arts ‘96, San Mateo Glean, Four Walls Gallery, San Francisco Armory Art Center Figurative Works, West Palm Beach Stockton National, Stockton Sixty Fifth Annual Statewide, Santa Cruz Twelfth Annual, Visual Arts Alliance, Houston Triton Museum, Santa Clara Berkeley Art Center Association, Berkeley 14th Annual Bay Arts “93”, San Mateo 13th Annual Bay Arts “92”, San Mateo Berkeley Art Center Association, Berkeley Hats and Head Gear, San Francisco Arts Commission Testing the Market, Untitled Gallery, San Francisco

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Cooley Godward, LLP, San Diego Interland, San Mateo, CA Southwestern Bell Wireless, Dallas Union 76, Los Angeles Wachovia Securities, La Jolla, CA

Installation view of 3 Gymnopedies (after Caravaggio) & Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right (after Watteau)