The Merry soul is cheerful and lively. Perhaps someone who comes alive only after a few drinks
Explore the works below. Before expanding the text, think to yourself:
What do you see?
What do you feel?
What might it be addressing?
What questions do you have?
Do you like it? Why or why not?
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This is Beer Garden with Ash (2009) by Nicole Eisenman. Beer Garden takes place in—you guessed it—a beer garden. Foregrounded by five figures, a busy scene unfolds before our eyes, revealing the highs and lows of spaces where people gather and drink. One would assume that a beer garden would be full of smiling faces, however as you take a closer look around, eyes are downturned, faces somber. As you look at our central figure—who looks mysteriously like Eisenman herself—we see her phone which, in our contemporary moment, feels like a relic. Made in 2009, Eisenman painted this in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
About the Artist
Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965) is a French-born American artist who works primarily in painting, and more recently in sculpture. She is best known for her figurative oil paintings that play with themes of sexuality, irony, and caricature. Stylistically, Eisenman draws from the social and political legacy of German expressionism, most obviously through their use of vibrant, jarring colors and shapes as well as a focus on individual emotion.
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This is a still from the installation space of the video The Visitors (2012) by Ragnar Kjartansson. In this nine-screen installation takes us inside the Rokeby house in upstate New York, where the rooms are occupied with Kjartansson and his friends as the perform simultaneously, but separately, a song with lyrics taken from a poem written by Kjartansson’s ex-wife. Kjartansson can be found naked in the bathtub, singing alongside his guitar. The video ends with the musicians leaving the house and frolicking into the fields outside singing the song as they go. While they perform a raw, emotional song, the community that builds around music draws the viewer in, lifting their spirits. Click the link below to get a glimpse of the installation.
About the Artist
Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976) is an Icelandic artist engaging with a myriad of mediums but most notably in video. His works have the feeling of classical theater.
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This is The Hours Behind You (2011), a painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The Hours Behind You features five Black women dancing in a circle. They wear white dresses and no shoes. Like all of Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings, the story is unclear. Are these women performing a ritual or merely dancing to dance? Could it be one woman, appearing in different positions as she dances alone in a circle or is it truly five women? One can almost see a central object—maybe a maypole or a a bonfire—something almost religious around which they circle.
About the Artist
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (b. 1977) is a British artist of Ghanaian heritage. She is best known for her portraits of imaginary Black subjects. Her style can be described as raw with muted colors and a general stillness to her works.