Through August 29, 2026
The observation that every painter paints him-, or herself — Ogni pintore dipinge sé — has been an art-world truism since the Florentine patron Cosimo de Medici made the assertion in the fifteenth century. Taken literally, we would absurdly search for likenesses that artists never created; but taken metaphorically, the phrase handily denotes the visual style of an artist that persists independent of the subject matter — or did, until modernism’s anti-aesthetic renunciation of the fetishized maker’s “hand.”
There is a definite family resemblance shared by the porcelain with underglaze ceramic figures of Cynthia McIntosh’s “Turn the Party.” The title is a nod to Miss Amini’s booty-shaker, “Turn the Party Up,” indicative of the high-spirited humor in these caricaturized busts. Of indeterminate gender, they consistently bear diamond-shaped skulls, pointed noses and chins, protuberant eyes and ears, and small mouths with pursed lips. One thinks of Dame Maggie Smith’s fastidiously prissy, supercilious grande dames.
The busts are a satiric take on the models of realism seen in the Roman portrait bust tradition. They typically capture, warts and all, the likenesses and personalities of esteemed ancestors with such accurate observation and transcription that the idealized generic types of the Greeks, while stunningly beautiful, look theatrical, airbrushed and superficial by comparison. The Pasadena artist, who has worked in animation for years at Disney, Warner Brothers and the Cartoon Network, clearly enjoys subversion through humor and exaggeration. Her Artist Statement pokes fun at the authoritarian mission to dumb down America with a faux diktat excoriating leftist ”education on … critical party theory, panty equity, and panty identities.”
McIntosh’s previous show, “Noble Ladies,” lampooned the women of the upper classes with figurative sculptures named after Mabel, Gertrude, Beatrice, Virginia, Agatha, Hyacinth, Eunice, and Wilhelmina — names that may or may not refer to specific persons, but that effectively parody the BBC Downton Abbey’s depiction of the World War I wounded. The figures are generally conical, surmounted by distorted heads, with shoulders, bosoms, arms, and feet either omitted or minimized. Bodies are covered with voluminous garments with print patterns that might have been designed by Gustav Klimt or Friedensreich Hundertwasser for a Roerich-era Diaghilev/Nijinsky ballet.
The effect is of papier-mâché hand puppets rendered at an enlarged, nearly life-size scale. Polychromed porcelain and clay stand in for precious marble. If the ostensible puppets seem to have been imported into the fine-art portrait tradition, enlarged and transformed beyond perishable materials, they remain in spirit playful and approachable. In this respect they share in the aesthetic of Jean Dubuffet, the Art Brut master who made unruly, anti-academic figurative works in the 1950s and ‘60s. Dubuffet’s uninhibited embrace of vernacular, everyday subjects and materials exerted a strong influence on McIntosh, as have his mosaic-like “Hourloupe” works of the 1970s.
The seven bust figures included in “Turn the Party” (all 2026) are smaller than the “Noble Ladies” series, concentrating on the upper torso, with the two-foot-tall figures mounted atop pedestals, though not directly, as one might expect, but secured on metal shafts a few inches above the top of each pedestal. Seen in the aggregate they suggest the characters of an unknown play, or the actors one might encounter after a dramatic performance, still in costume, half theatrical character, half real person. “Bust 1,” judging by the crown, is a king, but his jocular expression, with mouth agape, eyes infused, and long, drooping mustache, suggests comic farce rather than lord and master of all he surveys. The character depicted in “Bust 2,” with its cigar, bulbous nose, and newsboy cap is suggestive of the character type of a scrappy, voluble second banana from a 1930s newspaper film. The breasts, adding an element of gender ambiguity, are concentrically painted like targets and betoken matronly dignity and poise. “Bust 3” sports a large necklace flimsily affixed to breast pockets or patches, and, erupting from the head, a jeweled crown and/or dagger. “Bust 7” is similarly androgynous and aristocratic, bare-breasted and crowned, and wearing a distinctly un-regal expression.
A separate group of seven full-figure soft sculptures are fabricated from high-density foam covered with canvas and paint (all 2026). The forms are generalized and simplified, as if fashioned by primitive tools, and the irregular forms suggest cave paintings shaped by rock outcroppings or cuts of meat. All are presented atop metal shafts affixed to flat circular bases, suggesting Francis Bacon’s figures trapped in the metaphorical stones of their own physicality. “Soft Sculpture 1” depicts a woman in a bikini or underwear, while “Soft Sculpture 2” depicts a man wearing briefs in front, but with bare buttocks. “Soft Sculpture 3” depicts a couple embracing, a time-worn romantic/tragic theme here bedecked with a bold black redaction X. These hybrid works are implicitly opportunities for storytelling that clearly stimulate the imagination of this theatrical artist, who is also a set designer.
