Scratching the Surface: The Cinematic Paintings of Anna Weyant
Photos by Rob McKeever, © Anna Weyant, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery
Stemming from a 1972 song by the soft rock band Bread that addresses the highs and lows of a musician’s life, The Guitar Man was Anna Weyant’s 2023 show at Gagosian’s Paris gallery. It was the New York-based artist’s debut solo exhibition in Europe, and it bears a poignant title. The song that inspired the show takes listeners from spectacle of the packed concert to the waning crowds that inevitably come with time. It incorporates the role of the audience (“Then you find yourself a message / And some words to call your own / And take them home”) into the story. Lyric after lyric could be just as easily applied to the art star.
In just a handful of years since she graduated from RISD, Anna Weyant has become an art world sensation. When The Wall Street Journal profiled her back in 2022, her 2020 painting “Falling Woman” had already sold at auction with Sotheby’s for $1.6 million and there was, reportedly, a two-hundred-person waiting list for her work. That same year, at age twenty-seven, she became the youngest person on Gagosian’s roster of artists. Since then, she’s gained a sort of celebrity appeal, turning up alongside fashionistas, New York high society and Hollywood stars in the party reports of magazines like Vogue and W.
As Weyant’s star has continued to ascend, her work appears to be in a period of transition. Recent pieces dive deeper into the pop culture references and surrealism that were dusted across other works. At the same time, she seems to be incorporating new comments on fame, adding to seasoned themes of womanhood present in her previous exhibitions.
IT’S A SUBTLE MERGER OF REAL LIFE AND FICTION IMBUED WITH A DOSE OF SATIRE AND ABSURDIST HUMOR.
In the press surrounding Weyant’s work, there’s often mention of similarities to artists of the Dutch Golden Age or contemporary artists like John Currin, but that seems to be scratching the surface of possible influences or visual similarities. In “Girl in the Rain,” where the subject’s face is mostly obscured by a large, black umbrella, there are echoes of Magritte, with the pattern of raindrops in the painting bringing to mind the rain of men in “Golconda.” With “May I Have Your Attention, Please?” Weyant’s protagonist appears with rosy cheeks and big black eyes that recall not just comics and animation art, but the pop surrealism of Gary Baseman and Victor Castillo.
But often Weyant’s work appears to have more in common with film than painting. Like the directors Sofia Coppola and Anna Biller, she blends visual cues and cultural references from various decades to build narratives about women that transcend time. Her use of light and shadow in pieces like “House Exterior” and “Girl with Candlestick” evoke classic horror films, while her use of certain motifs, like mirrors, might remind viewers of filmmakers like Hitchcock and Cocteau.
Weyant’s 2019 debut solo show was titled Welcome to the Dollhouse, a nod to Todd Solondz’s mid-1990s cult classic tale of misfit middle schooler Dawn Weiner. It included a painting of a melancholy girl with tissue popping out of her bra called “Some Dolls Are Bigger Than Others,” a clear play on The Smiths song “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others.” Two years later, Weyant contributed to Artists Inspired by Music: Interscope Reimagined, a group show at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with a piece inspired by Gwen Stefani’s album, The Sweet Escape. The references to pop culture were a part of Weyant’s work early on in her career but appear more pronounced now. In “House Exterior,” from The Guitar Man, she depicts a dilapidated, three-story house that’s instantly recognizable from the beloved Hitchcock film Psycho. Moreover, Weyant actually built a model recalling the Bates home that served as a source of inspiration for the show, using it to play with lighting as well.
In the gallery information for this show, Weyant’s influences for The Guitar Man are noted as The Addams Family, Clue, Looney Tunes, and Playboy. The references aren’t always as obvious as in “This Is a Life?” or “House Exterior.” It’s not until you know that Clue is an influence that you might consider “Girl with Candlestick” a possible nod to the mystery-board-game-turned-1980s-cult-film where a candlestick is one of the possible murder weapons.
WEYANT’S WORK APPEARS TO HAVE MORE IN COMMON WITH FILM THAN PAINTING.
In “The Return of the Girls Next Door,” its title perhaps an allusion to the ‘00s reality show centered around the Playboy Mansion, Weyant plays with imagery that draws from multiple eras. The blonde, flip hairdos accessorized with a ribbon recall 1960s films, perhaps a bit of Belle du Jour and Valley of the Dolls. The central figure’s toned physique—note the defined muscles around the shoulders—and sheer thong underwear bring her into the twenty-first century. She holds hands with two nearly identical figures on either side of her.
A year prior to The Guitar Man, Weyant presented “Baby, It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over” at Gagosian’s New York gallery. That show included a series of portraits that consisted of two images of the same woman. In “Venus,” you see a front and back view of tennis superstar Venus Williams. In “Sophie,” the image presents a stranger scenario, with the painting’s protagonist standing on one tiptoe and propped up higher by a double of her own head. With “The Return of the Girls Next Door,” Weyant continues that motif of multiples. In fact, she amplifies that throughout the series of paintings. The “Girl with Candlestick” and “Girl in the Rain” may also be the girls next door, who may also be the cartoon heroine of “May I Have Your Attention, Please?”
In fact, it would be entirely fair to assume that, instead of a collection of visual stories, The Guitar Man is one feature-length narrative that takes a few wild turns as the main character reflects on art and attention. If that’s the case, then maybe it’s summed up by the painting, “This Is a Life?” The title—lifted from a 1955 Looney Tunes parody of the mid-twentieth-century television show This Is Your Life—appears in the painting, written in a typeface reminiscent of that used in the beloved animated series. In this still life, you’ll find three flowers that look as if they were pulled out of a cartoon. But zoom in on the vase and you’ll see a sliver of a face reflected on its surface. It’s this subtle merger of real life and fiction in Weyant’s art, imbued with a dose of satire and absurdist humor, that serve to “find yourself a message… some words to call your own … and take them home.”*
This article appears in Hi-fructose Issue 70, available here.
The work of Margaret Curtis moves between provocative and quiet moments, each reflecting both on our current social climate and the act of painting itself. She has said that her process is “a geological process of layering and erosion.” In a statement, she offers some insight into the more consistent themes in her paintings over time:
The flesh takes a leading role in the art of Duarte Vitória, though not always in the most expected ways. In some works, it’s the bright red lips of the subject that command attention. In others, the artist focuses on a pair of hands coming together. Things get more eerie and unsettling in compositions where the flesh is folded and speckled with red as if bloody. In one painting, a face gets sectioned off by a rope wrapped tautly around a head. Even with a half-closed eye, the subject looks straight at the viewer as if the ropes do not exist. It’s hard to tell whether the subjects feel trapped in their flesh or strangely liberated by its inescapable existence. With each strange scene — made even more intense with careful shading — the story stays unclear but the question of human mortality stays pertinent.
Serge Gay Jr.’s new monochromatic acrylic paintings reckon with American history and the voices long suppressed. In a new show at Art Attack SF, running Feb. 6-March 3, his new body of work is shown. "There’s a common belief of living in a world that is black and white; however there many shades of gray … and sometimes a bit of color,” the artist says.
In Marc Burckhardt’s paintings, the artist’s work tethers classical influences to contemporary comic and pop art. In a recent show at Paul Roosen Contemporary, “Fault Lines," his newer mythological explorations are shown. Burckhardt was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.