Nicole Eisenman Anton Kern Gallery

Caught the last day of this much hyped hip and hipster metro retro lesbo show of paintings by Eisenman who seems to be the pin up painter, the flavor of the month at least for the moment. I'm not a fan, I found the works in this show very facile and dull. Yes there are strains of politics, sex and cable news topics running through her canvases but so what. I get it, I'm living it and I don't need chic expensive paintings to give me some educate.
Now I'm not saying that she is a terrible painter far from it, and I'm always happy to see some exciting realist works but these didn't do it for me. Maybe I was expecting too much, I mean the praise and great reviews were like bread crumbs on the road to Grandma's house which turned out to be stale and dry.
The narratives are too laid out and cozy for me, and easily the best works for me were the small painting drawings in the back room that are nice even though they look like every drawing being shown in the "now" galleries of Chelsea and LES.
These are likeable works cute, cuddly and pretty.. They are crowded and cramped with signs and meanings and make us think that we are looking at some heavy stuff. They are deadly aware.
They often remind me of children's book illustrations. Fine but for me they are banal and pale and look like they would be at home on book covers. I would like to give her credit though for making what might be the ugliest piece of sculpture of the 21st Century (it squats in the back room taking up space next to all the nice little drawings and paintings) and hey I'd like to propose that we give her everything, lets get it over with, give her another McArthur, give her three, give her every fucking grant out there, give her the biggest studio in the city and let her art fill every gallery and museum in the world month in and month out, let it be on every art magazine cover and every package of cereal in the supermarket, let it adorn our buses and subway cars, let it be on disposable napkins and dishes. And then maybe we can move on to the next great thing happening in art today.