Natalie Frank

Contemporary and Old Art Reviews

Natalie Frank

Postby CAP » Mon Jan 21, 2013 4:17 am

This review is prompted by a You Tube from last year rather than a current show. The gallery scene seems a bit dead just now. Maybe it’s me. Anyway, for one reason or another I ended up watching this studio visit by Hilary Harkness to Natalie’s studio in Bushwick. I’ve known of her stuff from a debut solo show at Mitchell Innes & Nash back in 2007 but I haven’t really kept up (little flag to myself there...) these days she shows with Fredericks & Freiser but pretty much maintains the intense bodily thing – everyone sweaty, preferably prone, a bit degraded and Tennessee Williamsish. Expect a cameo from Marlon Brando or Paul Newman at some point, probably as Nazis.

Natalie gets good reviews in AiA, Modern Painters and Ben Sutton on Blouinartinfo summarizes the work – ‘Like thrilling hybrids of Jenny Saville, Francis Bacon, and Neo Rauch, Frank’s bruised, disfigured, deconstructed, and generally female figures uneasily occupy thickly rendered Gothic spaces interrupted by sudden ruptures in figuration and ghostly, abstract apparitions’. Sounds tasty doesn’t it? A little too tasty actually. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, gilding the lily and covering too many bases. And listening to Natalie on the video, I found myself agreeing with a lot of the things she wants from her painting – she has good ideas – but then looking at them and thinking whoa! We have officially entered overkill. All these moves are just neutralising one another. What I’m recoiling from is the melodrama, the over-the-top-ness.

In more cynical hands, it could be camp and essentially hammy. But for Natalie it’s all a bit earnest, a bit forced.

You could put it down to youthful ambition, the need to ramp it up to 11 for the whole set, to leave nothing in the tank. But you would still be putting it down. You see this kind of thing in art school – not even on post grad courses – and there you sort of excuse it, thinking well at least they’re getting the chops down. They at least demonstrate accepted technique, acquaintance with popular themes and so on. Is it time for a coffee yet? Everyone has to start from somewhere. Even if it’s not somewhere you can personally accept or find even feasible. The next step is to then find their own voice, which is obviously much harder and generally takes years and a string of appalling day jobs and probably a few failed relationships. Okay, let’s not get too personal. But post grad courses tend to hustle you into thinking if you just find some suitably correct cultural theme, not yet over-subscribed, you have a niche, a mission and a statement. And unfortunately a lot of them believe that. You hear them trot out their little sound bites when asked to describe their work. They’re the ones composed entirely of incomprehensible jargon. And you think to yourself – what a wonderful world… - no! Actually you try very hard not to be patronizing. But deep down you are discreetly placing this person in the terminal loser tray.

Those really diligent students – the ones that the lecturers love and give all their prizes to – the ones that have all the technique, the tools and materials, the reading list and fantastic facilities and networks - they rarely if ever go on to anything but mediocrity. Because what they’re good at is being students, followers. And at a certain point this gets in the way of going beyond that. At a certain point you are on your own and no amount of networking can allay that. You’re better off disconnecting all that shit and just going for a walk. Yes, your own two feet, one in front of the other. You have to learn to see things differently, take different attitudes, leave home, I mean really leave home. It is up to you, just you. Eventually you will have to kill the thing you love, but by then you will see that you have something much better to replace it with. It will still be hard. It will still hurt. But by then you will also be one ruthless son of a bitch.

Anyway, getting back to Natalie Frank, who is around thirty by now, and I’m thinking, for all the impeccable training, tastes and opportunities, is still not quite getting it. Hard to know why. She seems a sensible, intelligent lady, doing a lot of painting. I’m sure she has a wonderful circle of friends. Hey Bushwick! But it is high time she ditched some of it – made a bit more room to move for herself. Nat, you can’t have it all, there just isn’t room and it only makes you look greedy. You need to forget all those flicky highlights on the rolling eyeballs for starters, the Bacon meets Cecily Brown shag-off and the thick black outline as some sort of option to slobbering fill. It’s just not you. Sometimes less really is more. You need to calm down. There’s no need to show us everything you know right off, every time. Let’s just be friends. Just start with the theme of the prone figure, dress down the setting, okay maybe think about the lighting but no attendants! No cornball fascist/bestial threats. Let’s just work on the pose – not the facial expression – reduce that to just the head’s angle – maybe do something with the hair. Let’s strip this thing down to just bass and drums. Let’s not even think about luscious flesh tones. Let’s just think about A tone – shading, volumes, limbs... You think you know all this stuff and way way more but let’s just see you get back to basics and make them your own for a while.

;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;) 8-) ;)

Natalie's website is here.
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Re: Natalie Frank

Postby CAP » Sat Jan 26, 2013 12:23 pm

On second thoughts, perhaps I should wait until she's say, 35 before getting impatient. Artistic development is a tricky thing. Some people are late bloomers and there's too much pressure for artists to spring from art school fully formed. It's not like Nat's work doesn't show some development between 2007 and 2012, she is on the way to somewhere... :|
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Re: Natalie Frank

Postby Nataliefrank » Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:45 pm

Yikes.
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