Personal Effects: The Art of Laurie Lipton
The drawings of Laurie Lipton have bewildered and enchanted audiences for several decades. Each piece wields a cacophony of influences and experiences in dreamlike visions. When she talks about her work, whether from the 1980s or recent months, Lipton yields any specific explanation to the viewer. “Everything I’ve ever seen, read, felt, thought, heard… it all goes into the mush of my brain and out through my left hand into imagery,” she says. “To me it’s a weird, inexplicable alchemy.”
The New York-born artist first picked up a pencil at the age of four, and she just kept drawing. That path led her to be the first person to graduate from Carnegie-Mellon University with a fine arts degree in drawing. So after numerous years and shows and breakthroughs, it’s difficult for Lipton to answer the question of how her work has evolved. “As I’ve been drawing, exclusively, for over half a century, the evolution of my work is hard to package into a neat progression,” she says. “Let’s just say that the more I drew, the better I got. It’s like practicing on an instrument every day for years: After a while you’re able to play virtually anything. However I prefer not to rest on my laurels, but to challenge myself in each new piece. It keeps me on my toes and focused. I never want to ‘sleep walk’ through a drawing.”
Lipton had been encouraged to pursue abstract and conceptual work in school. Yet, despite being told that figurative art was centuries behind us, Lipton found sanctuary in the works of Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck, Francisco Goya, and the black-and-white photographer Diane Arbus. After school, Lipton spent the next thirty-six years living and working abroad. She landed and lives in Los Angeles today, yet still looks back on her time in Holland, England, Belgium, France, and Germany as formative in that “inexplicable alchemy.”
I draw about things that concern me, bother me, move me, make me want to scream, make me laugh. My drawings deal with the things I feel passionate about…Otherwise, why bother?”
“I was able to be where great works of art resided,” Lipton says. “It was inspiring. To be able to walk outside, take a tram and see Rembrandt, Van Eyck, and Memling at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, or go visit a Michelangelo in a small church in Bruges, or wander into the National Gallery in London and check out a Holbein was uplifting. Of course there are museums in the U.S., but Europe also has the architecture and sense of centuries of art history to accompany these works. It kept my standards high.”
She developed a technique that has been called “an insane way to draw.” Her work can be up to six feet by twelve feet, but each tone is created with “teeny-tiny” cross-hatched lines. It’s a texture that adds to the surreal nature of Lipton’s work. The effect is similar to the centuries-old egg tempera paintings that fill art history books. And still after all these years, she herself finds it strange. “It’s like painting a mural with a two-hair brush,” she says. “It’s nuts… but the amount of detail I get with this technique is unique and luscious. You can’t really tell from photos or on computer screens. You have to see the work in the flesh. When people enter a room full of Lipton drawings, the only sound you hear is hushed awe… and the occasional outburst of ‘Insane!’”
The casual observer may view her work made within the past few years as decidedly American in its explorations. Recent drawings integrate the visage of President Donald Trump in enormous, nightmarish contraptions like 2017’s “POST TRUTH.” A Western reflection dominates other works, as a selfie stick projects a wielder’s face while obscuring it in 2015’s “Selfie.” Facebook “Like” symbols, emojis, and iPhones populate other drawings. Yet, the hyperdetailed pieces blend that contemporary iconography with retro-futuristic machinery, as winding wires and circuits and throwback factory workers man the units. It’s an omnipresent approach that feel as aggregated as our dreams.
My work has always been about being alive and kicking in the twentieth and twenty-first century, no matter where I lived…”
Even with all of the embellishments that recall the machines of yesteryear or the centuries ahead, there has always been a nowness to Lipton’s work, a freshness that exists in just how her visions continue to change. Lipton says she’s always attempted to reflect her experience of the day she’s creating a piece. If a certain cause or emotion (or politician) has affected her in any way, they may appear in a new drawing. “My work has always been about being alive and kicking in the twentieth and twenty-first century, no matter where I lived,” she adds. “I draw about things that concern me, bother me, move me, make me want to scream, make me laugh. My drawings deal with the things I feel passionate about… Otherwise, why bother?”
Surely, as funneled through Lipton’s imagination, there’s potential for viewers to misconstrue what she’s trying to say. The more disparate aspects of her work feel at once wholly intentional and enigmatic. There appear to be explorations of gender, eroticism, and urbanization throughout her bodies of work. But even in bold black-and-white tones, her vision feels so specific to her, that even in a gallery one can’t fully process them. How does she feel about that? Once again, she yields that right to those who are able to find her work and consider it. “There are no misconceptions,” Lipton maintains. “Whatever you see is correct. I have no control over a viewer’s response. My only concern is the battle to bring a flat, white piece of paper to life using the techniques I’ve learned over many decades… If I could explain to you, in words, the meaning and ‘sensibility’ behind my imagery, I’d be a writer. Who was it who said, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words?’ Each viewer brings to a work of art his or her own subjective interpretation. It is different for everyone. If I stick words on to my work, I would only be diminishing it and narrowing its scope. I create the stuff… you have to interpret it, if you feel compelled to.”*
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 46, which is sold out. Support what we do and get our latest issue by subscribing to Hi-Fructose here.
