拍品专文
At once opulent and quotidian, Urs Fischer’s Arcimboldo combines humor with a mischievous sense of disruption. Executed in 2019, Arcimboldo belongs to the Swiss-born artist’s ongoing Problem Painting series, where vintage Hollywood publicity stills and glossy headshots are fractured by the obstruction of everyday household objects. Here, Fischer merges a classic Hollywood portrait of Veronica Lake with a smattering of brightly-colored bananas, strawberries, apples and eggs. Like the painting’s namesake (the sixteenth-century painter Giuseppe Acrimboldo), this playful yet striking clash of elements underscores Fischer’s fascination with disorder and decay, as polished celebrity imagery is disrupted by the everyday.
The layered composition creates a compelling push-and-pull effect for viewers; while the ordinary elements — mushrooms, carrots, and apples — are immediately recognizable, they lack the allure of the mysterious Golden Age starlet they obscure. Across Fischer’s Problem Paintings, once familiar faces like Veronica Lake, Lauren Bacall, and Jimmy Stewart emerge from behind items as mundane as a metal pipe, a burning cigarette butt, or a rotting hardboiled egg. But Fischer’s intention is not simply about recognition; rather, he challenges viewers to focus beyond the iconic names, exploring the tension between fame and the everyday. Seemingly of this very portrait, the artist has explained: “Actually, it’s not about the faces in the background so much as the things in the foreground. My daughter comes in and she doesn't say: 'Oh, that's Veronica Lake.' She says: 'Lemon! Mushroom! Salad!' The things in the foreground are much more universal than the things in the background.” (U. Fischer in an interview with J. Griffin, 'Urs Fischer, the reluctant interviewee,' The Art Newspaper, Issue 234, April 2012 n.p.).
Unlike his Pop Art predecessor, Andy Warhol, who selected his iconic Hollywood subjects for their perceived timelessness, Fischer is not vested in his viewers’ knowledge of the now elusive silver-screen stars. Instead, he enlists the archetypal power of the Hollywood headshot to hint that the figure hiding behind bananas, mushrooms, apples, and eggs was once “somebody.” “I think you'd have to live in the forest not to have been influenced by Hollywood,” Fischer has said about the use of publicity shots in his Problem Paintings. “I think the entertainment and advertising industries shape everybody these days. It's like the Catholic Church; Hollywood is like the Vatican. It shapes how you imagine the world to be, who you want to be, what's good, what's bad” (ibid). Yet, the irony behind Fischer's painting remains that common produce is more universal than the star of Sullivan's Travels and I Married a Witch, Veronica Lake. The mystery of her identity lends the piece its inexplicable charm.
“That’s why these film stills work,” Fischer explained, “for me it doesn’t matter who it is. The stills come from a time when black-and-white photography was at its peak. The images are very graphic because it’s all about light and dark; the faces are like the perfect Greek sculpture, this idealized thing. A lot of it has to do with depth of field. In the old photos, usually the depth of field is on one eye, and it’s as thin as a sheet of paper. With the paintings I want to build an ultimate space — there’s a lot of space but there’s no space” (U. Fischer interview N. Wakefield, “Bear With Me: Swiss artist Urs Fischer talks to Curator Neville Wakefield About Art and Identity,” Garage Magazine, February 2013, p. 141).
To create his silk-screened Problem Paintings, Fischer photographs common objects in his studio, carefully pairing them with his curated selection of black-and-white Hollywood headshots. These images are then processed in Photoshop, where the monochromatic portraits are digitally “painted” with vibrant, jewel-like colors, and the objects in the foreground are further refined to amplify their bold hues. Each work is printed on a monumental scale, with the carefully “painted” star aligned precisely to its contrasting object.
Working in painting, sculpture, installation and photography, Fischer fuses teachings of both the two-dimensional and three-dimensional medium in his Problem Paintings to convey his message. “You have to put something that they want to see behind," the artist said. "Most of the people in these paintings are from old black-and-white movie stills that I've really worked on. The kids have no clue who these people are. Zero. They don't even know Kirk Douglas” (ibid.).
The layered composition creates a compelling push-and-pull effect for viewers; while the ordinary elements — mushrooms, carrots, and apples — are immediately recognizable, they lack the allure of the mysterious Golden Age starlet they obscure. Across Fischer’s Problem Paintings, once familiar faces like Veronica Lake, Lauren Bacall, and Jimmy Stewart emerge from behind items as mundane as a metal pipe, a burning cigarette butt, or a rotting hardboiled egg. But Fischer’s intention is not simply about recognition; rather, he challenges viewers to focus beyond the iconic names, exploring the tension between fame and the everyday. Seemingly of this very portrait, the artist has explained: “Actually, it’s not about the faces in the background so much as the things in the foreground. My daughter comes in and she doesn't say: 'Oh, that's Veronica Lake.' She says: 'Lemon! Mushroom! Salad!' The things in the foreground are much more universal than the things in the background.” (U. Fischer in an interview with J. Griffin, 'Urs Fischer, the reluctant interviewee,' The Art Newspaper, Issue 234, April 2012 n.p.).
Unlike his Pop Art predecessor, Andy Warhol, who selected his iconic Hollywood subjects for their perceived timelessness, Fischer is not vested in his viewers’ knowledge of the now elusive silver-screen stars. Instead, he enlists the archetypal power of the Hollywood headshot to hint that the figure hiding behind bananas, mushrooms, apples, and eggs was once “somebody.” “I think you'd have to live in the forest not to have been influenced by Hollywood,” Fischer has said about the use of publicity shots in his Problem Paintings. “I think the entertainment and advertising industries shape everybody these days. It's like the Catholic Church; Hollywood is like the Vatican. It shapes how you imagine the world to be, who you want to be, what's good, what's bad” (ibid). Yet, the irony behind Fischer's painting remains that common produce is more universal than the star of Sullivan's Travels and I Married a Witch, Veronica Lake. The mystery of her identity lends the piece its inexplicable charm.
“That’s why these film stills work,” Fischer explained, “for me it doesn’t matter who it is. The stills come from a time when black-and-white photography was at its peak. The images are very graphic because it’s all about light and dark; the faces are like the perfect Greek sculpture, this idealized thing. A lot of it has to do with depth of field. In the old photos, usually the depth of field is on one eye, and it’s as thin as a sheet of paper. With the paintings I want to build an ultimate space — there’s a lot of space but there’s no space” (U. Fischer interview N. Wakefield, “Bear With Me: Swiss artist Urs Fischer talks to Curator Neville Wakefield About Art and Identity,” Garage Magazine, February 2013, p. 141).
To create his silk-screened Problem Paintings, Fischer photographs common objects in his studio, carefully pairing them with his curated selection of black-and-white Hollywood headshots. These images are then processed in Photoshop, where the monochromatic portraits are digitally “painted” with vibrant, jewel-like colors, and the objects in the foreground are further refined to amplify their bold hues. Each work is printed on a monumental scale, with the carefully “painted” star aligned precisely to its contrasting object.
Working in painting, sculpture, installation and photography, Fischer fuses teachings of both the two-dimensional and three-dimensional medium in his Problem Paintings to convey his message. “You have to put something that they want to see behind," the artist said. "Most of the people in these paintings are from old black-and-white movie stills that I've really worked on. The kids have no clue who these people are. Zero. They don't even know Kirk Douglas” (ibid.).