Art

Rediscovering forgotten artists and revaluing those who have been undervalued is all the rage in the current world of art. Surly cynics would grumble that it’s the fault of a commercial market that’s busy trawling the archives for old artists it can revive and cash-in on, at a moment when there are too many young artists and not enough great ones. Cuddly optimists will tell you that it’s good that talented, passed-over artists get a new chance at recognition.

So what’s the deal with Maria Lassnig at the Serpentine? This is the 90 year old’s first ever public showing in the UK, but this slight selection of paintings (which, apart from two from the ’90s, were all painted since 2001) bears a historical lack of depth and as such, seems a missed opportunity for so serious a venue hosting a well-established European artist.

Lassnig’s paintings are engaging enough. Her swift, sketchy style and acidic palette conjure up an anxious, comical world of malleable, often distorted figures who express their inner emotional tensions through their physical demeanour and unnatural colouring. Her vision has all the benefit of a half-century in dialogue with expressionism and surrealism and she can now ride high on contemporary painting’s new love for unabashedly weird figuration. Yet such trans-historical mobility also comes across as restless uncertainty – even within
a decade she changes course frequently.

Of course, the cuddly optimist would see in all this a laudable resistance to growing old gracefully, an artist refusing to rest on her laurels, going on with her search. The surly cynic however notes how every painting’s wall label lists it as ‘courtesy the artist’ – code for ‘I am for sale’ – and how the names of the two commercial galleries behind this public show are absent.