Lindy Lee
(Australia 1954– )
- Title
- This too is heroic
- Year
- 1988
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil paint, wax on canvas
- Dimensions
-
189.0 x 144.0 x 4.2cm stretcher
- Signature & date
- Signed and dated u.l. verso, black marker "Lindy Lee 1988".
- Credit
- Purchased 1988
- Accession number
- 307.1988
- Copyright
- © Lindy Lee, 1988. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
'This too is heroic' appropriates a detail from a painting by the Spanish 16th century painter El Greco. Lee scrapes away the black wax surface of her image to reveal a glowing red figure beneath. Her subject literally arises from the 'matière of her painting. Lee's purpose is to regain the power of the image in the original in an environment that is bombarded by a plethora of banal reproductions. The imagery in Lee's work is in a continual state of emergence and disappearance, of inquiry and challenge, typical of the lack of certainty experienced by many of the artists who came to the fore in the 1980s. As an icon of Western art, the El Greco image represents the history that has formed the artist's vision despite her Chinese origins. Conflating her interest in the work of American abstract painter Ad Reinhardt with this European history, Lee rediscovers the history that was replaced by the original black square of Modernism.
Art Gallery Handbook, 1994.
- Bibliography (2)
-
Anthony Bond (England; Australia) (Commissioning Editor), Wayne Tunnicliffe (New Zealand; Australia) (Commissioning Editor), Contemporary: Art Gallery of New South Wales Contemporary Collection, 2006, 178 (colour illus.).
Ewen McDonald (Australia) (Editor), The Art Gallery of New South Wales collections, Sydney, 1994, 267 (colour illus.).
- Exhibition history (1)
-
(Lindy Lee), Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 24 May 1988–11 Jun 1988.
