LOIS DODD
Lois Dodd: Nudes
in the Landscape New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture
8 West 8th street NYC 10011 212 673-6466 www.nyss.org/dodd
December 4, 2003-January 17, 2004
Lois Dodd: Small
Paintings Alexandre Gallery 41 East 57th St. NYC 10022 212 755 2828
www.alexandregallery.com
December 4, 2003-January 17, 2004
By JOE
FYFE
Lois Dodd Tennis
Anyone? 1999
oil on plywood, 14-3/4 x 18-1/8 inches
Courtesy of Alexandre Gallery, New York
When one thinks about it,
it's a little sad how seldom women are presented as casual creatures
in the mass media. Their images are usually sexualized (just look at
any magazine rack) or they must seduce the masculine camera in some
proper, presentable way. Or worse, they are depicted bonding together
in not very funny Hollywood scenarios. These are several reasons why
it's refreshing to look at Lois Dodd's paintings of female nudes. Here
is a world that has no truck with the male gaze. Soft, blunt, occasionally
ungainly, Dodd's women wear their nakedness matter-of-factly. They have
a dignity that Dodd presents as the true quality of the modernist nude.
In their habitation of a
timeless summer afternoon, Dodd's women sometimes pose en plein air
for other women painters. In several works, such as Legs Up Against
Tree (2002) or Figure in Hammock (2000) they insinuate their shadow-tattooed
bodies into the surrounding foliage. Or they approximate backyard sculptures
as in Three Nudes on Woodpile (1999) or Nude on Woodpile (1999.) They
are always self-possessed. In Tennis Anyone? (1999 ) a little masterpiece
that seems to nod toward Milton Avery, a nude woman lies on the grass,
as unconscious and abstracted as the colorful laundry on the clothesline
behind her.
Lois Dodd has a long history
as a painter. She is 75 years old and works in NYC, Maine and Rural
New Jersey. Along with her larger paintings she does many on-the-spot
smaller works. Dodd is partial to the vignette but her works owe nothing
to photography. In her various unpeopled small landscapes that make
up her uptown show, Dodd demonstrates precisely how a deftly placed
piece of paint functions in a picture. She is a concise observer who
is at pains to balance her motif with the factuality of the mark and
her materials. In other words, she wants to make paintings that look
like an ordinary person painted them with typical art materials. This
is, of course, a political statement--a friendly, democratic one. Behind
these benign surfaces lies the scope and skill of a Mandarin poet.
