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Beatriz Milhazes at James Cohan
Art in America, March, 2005 by Matthew Guy Nichols
When Clement Greenberg dismissed decoration as "the specter that haunts modernist painting," he tacitly acknowledged its formal resemblance to the nonobjective canvases he championed. Indeed, Greenberg's psychically freighted language posited decoration as the id to modernism's ego, always lurking in abstraction's shadow and threatening to assert itself. The work of Beatriz Milhazes consistently invokes this tension, and her latest show of five paintings and two collages was another welcome return of decoration's repressed esthetic.
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The grounds of Milhazes's newest paintings (all works 2004) are subdivided into colorful squares and rectangles that slightly overlap one another. Although such grids are a recent addition to Milhazes's work, her trademark profusion of ornament ultimately overwhelms these geometric scaffolds. As in the past, Milhazes applies layers of target motifs, concentric rings of small dots and flowers rendered as recognizable specimens or stylized abstractions. This repetition of roughly circular shapes endows her canvases with an expansive radial energy, as if to suggest that her decorative sensibility cannot be contained.
An explosion of ornament is certainly apparent in Mariposa, where a pink and flesh-toned ground supports dozens of blooming flowers, including a dazzling dahlia whose deep violet core gradually fades to lavender petals. These floral fireworks are anchored on the right by a dark filigree of French curves that transforms the entire composition into a magnificent brooch. Equally ravishing is Phebo, where another enormous flower dominates an array of satellite motifs. Keyed to a palette of fuchsia, gold and orange, this intensely vibrant canvas radiates a psychedelic trippiness that recalls the art of Peter Max, an effect Milhazes enhances with a smattering of hearts and peace signs.
Decoration has long been maligned for appealing more to the senses than to the intellect. As if courting this very critique, Milhazes introduces dozens of chocolate-bar wrappers into her new collages. Spread flat against large sheets of paper, the wrappers create crazy quilts of name-brand color. In Cacao, for example, the gold foil squares of Ghirardelli chocolates play against the pastel packaging of Lindt, Lacta and Nestle bars. Milhazes embellishes this brightly patterned surface with yet more floral shapes, here mostly cut from shimmering pieces of holographic paper. While some viewers may blanch at such sensory overload, preferring the relative austerity of a classic Cubist collage, I for one appreciate Milhazes's decorative indulgence. Like the flowers and chocolates that partially inspire them, her works remain unstinting sources of pleasure.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
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