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Carpets and kimonos
An artistic synthesis draws on icons from many cultures
By David J. Craig
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Elephants and Snakes, 2004, oil on canvas, 42” x 30”. Images courtesy of the College of Fine Arts |
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It has been called minor art, industrial art, and art of second rank. If you can use it, according to the West’s traditional distinction between fine art and decorative art, it’s the latter. That distinction, the paintings of Lise Lemeland seem to insist, ought not exist.
Lemeland uses forms associated with the decorative arts — especially textiles — and transforms them into “intricate, lush, and incredibly beautiful works whose detail must be seen in person in order to be believed,” says Lynne Cooney, exhibitions coordinator at the College of Fine Arts.
Culminating Lemeland’s semester-long CFA residency last fall is a solo exhibition, Lise Lemeland: Dragons and Lace, on display at the Sherman Gallery through February 25. The exhibition showcases a series of new and recent paintings that explore Lemeland’s fascination with textile patterns and designs. Gleaning visual forms and iconography from a diverse range of Western and non-Western sources — from Indian and Turkish carpets and textiles to European lace and Japanese kimonos — Lemeland creates a new and unique visual language.
“The emergence of this visual language is highly intuitive for me,” says Lemeland, who studied at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute. “I am captivated by the worlds of color and pattern revealed in the decorative arts from other cultures.”
Emerging from the ornate backgrounds of her paintings are elaborate configurations of dragons, snakes, and other mythological creatures that she gathers from various styles of animal illustration, including Indian miniature manuscripts, 18th-century engravings of animals, and Chinese textiles. While her source material provides the structural foundation for her paintings, Lemeland uses a sophisticated understanding of ornamental design to critique what she says are preconceptions about decoration and its secondary status in contemporary art making.
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Snakes and Palmettes, 2004, oil on canvas, 42” x 30”. |
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“By combining animals, lace, textile patterns, and carpet designs,” she says, “my intent is to shift images that are seldom contemplated in the realm of ‘high art’ into a painting that by virtue of its support and medium will be categorized as part of that realm.”
Lemeland’s work is distinguished in part, says Cooney, by its ability to demonstrate the multiple meanings and associations of common symbols. “She plays with the meanings of a lot of imagery, such as lace, which she shows to be fragile as well as intricate and strong,” Cooney says. “Throughout the exhibition, viewers will see forms and shapes that generally are associated with textile art and commercial art made aesthetically sophisticated in an overt way. She clearly pulls these forms into the realm of fine art.”
The exhibition is free and open to the public. For hours and more information, call 617-358-0295..
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January 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations