INTERVIEW: Curator Jadine Collingwood On Nicole Eisenman’s, “What Happened” at the MCA Chicago

Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965, Verdun, France; lives in Brooklyn, NY), Beer Garden with A.K., 2009. Oil on canvas; 65 × 82 in. (165.1 × 208.3 cm). De Ying Foundation. Photo: Bryan Conley, © 2023 Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

REVIEW
Nicole Eisenman, “What Happened”
MCA Chicago
220 E Chicago Ave.
Chicago IL 60611
Apr 6- Sept 22, 2024

By Ina Megalli

The morning of the press event for Nicole Eisenman: What Happened at the MCA, I am so nervous I get downtown an hour early. I feel underqualified, underprepared, and underdressed, and I haven’t even made it into the building. I wonder if I should have brought some kind of felt hat with an index card that says PRESS. I fear they won’t even let me in the front door without my ‘PRESS’ hat, and I frantically google milliners near me. The MCA is large and imposing, and I feel very small and meek and hatless. Ultimately, they let me in, and I make my way up to the gallery, where the museum has very kindly provided some coffee and pastries. I think about getting a cup of coffee, just to do something with my hands, but I figure that the addition of caffeine to my nervous system may cause my brain to fully liquify and run out of my ears, so I settle for sipping from my water bottle and sitting as far into a corner as I can. The rest of the journalists file in, looking very official and erudite. No one is wearing a felt hat, which makes me feel better, but they all seem to know each other, which makes my stomach sink.

Luckily, we are quickly led on a tour of the exhibition by Jadine Collingwood, the associate curator. I have an appointment to interview Collingwood later, reproduced here, and I hope to make a good impression by being particularly attentive to both her tour and the work. As we move through the space I become less and less skittish. I am grateful to learn that I love the work, and I have many things to say about it. Paintings that I saw on my laptop as I did research, made large and technicolor and fascinating before my eyes. A strange thing begins to happen, as I look closer at the paintings and into the faces of Eisenman’s figures. I start to see myself. In and among the members of the press, I feel a bit like a Nicole Eisenman character, neurotic and sweaty and human.

Nicole Eisenman is a Brooklyn based artist, known primarily for her figurative paintings, though the exhibition contains examples of her drawings, sculpture, and print. Eisenman’s work is strange, narrative, and humorous, often with an eye to social issues. What Happened is the first major survey of her work, initially shown in Munich and London, completing its tour at the MCA, its only stop in the United States. Curated by Jadine Collingwood and Jack Schneider, I sat down with Collingwood to discuss her thoughts and experience in bringing the exhibition together.

Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965, Verdun, France; lives in Brooklyn, NY), The Drawing Class, 2011. Oil and charcoal on canvas; 65 × 82 in. (165.1 × 208.3 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Society for Contemporary Art. Image courtesy the artist and Vielmetter Los Angeles. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

To begin, what was your first encounter with Nicole Eisenman’s work? What stood out to you about it?

I think one of the first things I saw was the piece that she did in Münster. I’m sure I probably saw other works, but the one I really noticed was this sculptural piece she did in Münster, as part of the Münster Sculpture Projects. It was this massive, multi-figure outdoor sculpture. It’s interesting, because I encountered her in sculpture work, but she’s really well known as a painter. I was blown away by the different kinds of figurative personalities that were being represented there. Then I got to know her painting practice after that. Which, of course, is also brilliant in how much she brings in all this humor, and playfulness, moving through different characters and vignettes.

Do you feel like there was an evolution in your relationship with her practice specifically in working with this exhibit?

Yeah, for sure. I’ve gotten to know the practice in general so much deeper. I saw the show when it was in Munich, and then in London, but even having the opportunity here to install it and be in the galleries for weeks on end, looking at the work, there are so many details and vignettes that I hadn’t noticed that came to the floor. It’s been really fun. There are all these small details. For instance, there’s a really large painting called Tail End, and on the bottom there’s this little trail of ants walking along the bottom of the canvas, and there are two that are carrying off a little bottlecap. There are lots of moments like that that are really poignant and sweet that you start to see if you really look at the paintings for a long time.

Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965, Verdun, France; lives in Brooklyn, NY), Tail End, 2021. Oil on linen; 128 × 105 in. (325.1 × 266.7 cm). Private collection.

There’s so much to work with. Every painting is so complicated and they’re so narrative. Considering that this exhibition was shown previously, in Munich and London, were there any particular challenges or joys about not only bringing it to the US, but specifically to the MCA, specifically to Chicago?

I’m really excited that it’s coming to Chicago. Chicago has such a legacy and history of figurative painting, very humorous figurative painting, [I’m] thinking about the Chicago Imagists. That history is really nice to draw on here in Chicago. There’s also a lot of references in Nicole’s work, especially her references to American consumer products that I think will read differently here. The Bumblebee Tuna cans, for instance. I’m hoping that that comes to the floor. And then, of course, the fact that some of the paintings are so massive that it’s hard to transport them overseas. We had the opportunity to include some paintings that weren’t in the other shows. Particularly, two massive, masterpiece works; one being The Abolitionists in the Park, [which] I read as a kind of history painting reflecting on this Black Lives Matter protest, and then Another Green World, which is basically a party. I actually wrote my essay about Another Green World, and I started off with “This is the best kind of party.”

Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965, Verdun, France; lives in Brooklyn, NY), The Abolitionists in the Park, 2020-21. Oil on canvas; 128 × 106 in. (325.1 × 269.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art Purchase, Green Family Art Foundation Gift, 2022. © Nicole Eisenman. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I was looking at The Abolitionists in the Park, and I was looking at the signs on the telephone poll, and I [thought], ‘I know that that sign says ‘Black Trans Lives Matter’, but in fifty years, that visual language of those letters will be so changed, and I think that’s so interesting. It’s such a contemporary piece and thinking about the way that develops. That leads me to another question. If you think about Eisenman as a feminist painter and a queer painter and an artist who’s interested in these social, contemporary questions, what do you think is a domineering thread through her work when it comes to those social questions?

She’s always been very irreverent and direct, but always with a sense of humor. That carries through, even from the early drawings where she’s doing Lesbian Recruitment Booth, she has never been afraid of or shied away from dealing directly with these issues, whether it’s gendered stereotypes, or the way that women are treated in old Master paintings, and that moves through the work. A lot of her early work was made for her tight knit group of friends in downtown New York. I got a question during the opening about how men reacted to [the work], and I [said], she didn’t care! She wasn’t making work for men, she was making work for her own community, and it didn’t really matter. I think that what happens as her practice develops and deepens is that she does start to broaden out to a larger audience and [begins] thinking about larger social and political issues. The works start to respond to the economic crisis, to the rise of the Tea Party and far right populism, [she] starts to think about environmentalism as well. So, all of these issues start to come into her paintings, but always from a careful and observant attention to the human figure in everyday life.

It’s a great point. Her viewpoint seems to be consistent, but it’s ebbing and flowing. I really appreciate that the exhibition is chronological, in the way that you can move through her practice. These issues are a thread and then also this sort of obsession with the figure. I wonder what you think about the figure in contemporary art. In this exhibition, it seems almost rare, to have a contemporary exhibit that’s so figurative.

I think the figurative is always the starting point for Nicole because you get the range of emotions and feelings and temperaments by always returning to the figure. Especially as she starts to group more and more figures into her canvases, it becomes a way of expressing different components or ideas. You may have someone who’s wistful, and staring off, and then you have two characters who are debaucherous and drunk. And so, it becomes a way of pointing to all these nuanced emotions. I also feel that Nicole approaches the figurative in a really fresh way that you maybe don’t see in a lot of figurative painting today. What I like about Nicole’s work is her approach seems really fresh to the figure, that she gives a lot of life, that she moves fluidly through styles. Sometimes doing something that seems kind of naïve, and almost sketch-like, and sometimes bringing in a very virtuosic, realistic representation. She’s not afraid to move through all those. She’s a really, really good figurative painter, but it feels like, when you’re looking at her work, that it’s not about that. Sometimes I feel like figurative painting can be about ‘look at how good of a figurative painter I am’, and she is really good, but the playfulness and the easiness that she moves through it makes it less about representations of the figure, and more about the motions and stories that she’s telling with them.

And that’s a move she’ll pull even in one piece. I was struck by how the figures all seem to be rendered slightly differently. One will be very rendered, and one will be a bit more cartoonish, and they’ll all be in the same piece. It’s really effective in representing narrative and character, but it’s representing skill as well.

It gives it a playfulness and a rhythm too, because there’s some figures take a lot of attention to see all the detail, and some that are sketched. It gives it a dynamism, I think.

Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965, Verdun, France; lives in Brooklyn, NY), The Triumph of Poverty, 2009. Oil on canvas; 65 × 82 in. (165.1 × 208.3 cm). From the Collection of Bobbi and Stephen Rosenthal, New York City. Image courtesy Leo Koenig Inc., New York.

Absolutely. So, known primarily as a painter, but working in all these other mediums, you’ve got that large scale sculpture, prints. What do you make of the sort of pie chart of mediums in this exhibition?

I’m glad we were able to bring in some of those other mediums. She’s just so good [at them]. Going back to the sculpture, and how we started, I encountered her as a sculptor first, and to see those works, you would have thought that she had been making these large-scale outdoor sculptures forever, but she only started to really make it in 2011-2012. I’m forgetting exactly when, but it would have been, I think around 2015 that I saw those works, and she’s so good at them. I think it’s important to include the sculpture because it has become more prominent in her practice, and she’s just really good at it. I think that some of the portraits of the human figure, you can see even when she’s doing a sculpture and she’s using clumps of clay, there’s this playfulness and freedom to move away from a realistic figure to something that’s very similar to the kind of comic book and cartoonish figures she had in her drawings in her early career.

 
Ina Megalli is a writer and student living in Chicago. Excerpts of her work can be found at inamegalli.com.


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