Beschreibung:

Mel Ramos Miss Martini #2 2004 Oil on canvas. 36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm). Signed and dated “Mel Ramos 04” on the reverse.
Provenance Galerie Terminus, Munich; Private collection, Hamburg Catalogue Essay “Ramos’s bite is honey-coated in humor, but it cuts through the skin of his nude, adding, unexpectedly, an undercurrent of displeasure to his ostensibly pleasurable pictures. Irony is the fly in her smooth ointment, as it were, a blemish suggesting that her beauty is not as ideal as it seems. In general, the irony of Ramos’s nudes is obscured by their exhibitionism, but then their exhibitionism is ironical, for it promises more that the deliver. High culture is ironically countercultural in a situation in which the popular culture in the dominant, majority culture. Ramos’s art is in part about the ironical intersection of high and low art—individually and collectively made art, one might say—as well as the reversal of their traditional positions. For popular art has more emotional clout and privilege, as it as its wide dissemination (directly pitched to the broadest public), suggests, that high art, which remains stuck in the closet of the museum, and has limited appeal. Ramos is trying to bring it out—into the arena of popular culture—perhaps in an effort to show that ostensibly simple ‘cheap’ art is aesthetically and expressively complex and demanding as difficult ‘expensive’ art, only not as obviously. If, as Hanna Segal writes, what distinguishes art from entertainment is that art involves ‘psychic work’ while entertainment makes no dent in the psychic status quo, then Ramos is suggesting she’s wrong,” (D. Kuspit, “The Uses of Irony: Popularity and Beauty in Mel Ramos’s Painting”, Mel Ramos Pop Art Fantasies, The Complete Paintings, New York, 2004). Read More