Blood and Guts: Susan Rothenberg's New Work

Blood. Breath. Violence, trauma, struggle, survival. These are the heady subjects of Susan Rothenberg's latest body of paintings, on display now at the MFA in Boston. The exhibit, which contains several paintings fresh from the artist's studio, befits an artist who once declared that Monet's paintings were essentially decorative because they packed no psychological punch. Rothenberg's own work, while often stunningly beautiful, is never merely decorative: the sum impact of the punch delivered by her last decade of work is enough to send you reeling.

The exhibit spans three rooms and 20-odd paintings Rothenberg produced in her New Mexico studio. In Dogs Killing Rabbit (1991-92), two dogs rip apart a rabbit as the dislocated outlines of human faces look on in horror. Four horse legs, familiar imagery to Rothenberg followers, loom above. The violence of the scene is captured in the hot, thrashing colors: the magenta of the horse's hooves, the reds and browns of the bloody bunny. The presence of the human heads in the upper right corner draws the viewer into an active engagement with the painting: as you observe the heads observing the fight, you become aware of your own role as an onlooker to the scene.

Rothenberg says she chooses the scale of her canvases partly according to how much energy she has. This certainly seems true: the energy that gives her larger pieces such presence peters out in smaller pieces like Ghost Rug (1994), where eyes float mysteriously above a ground the toxic pink of Valentine's Day cupcake frosting.

One cannot leave the exhibit without considering the monumental wall of Spanish Dancer paintings. What is significant in this series is the relationship of the subject to the background. She handles color in the grounds with the expertise of a mature artist- one could stare all day at her miraculous combinations of streaks of yellows, greens, warm browns and cool blue-grays. Rothenberg knows how to paint a truly beautiful ground, but still more remarkable is the way she deals with the relationship of the figure to that ground. In these paintings, the dancer is certainly the figure, yet her body is completely integrated with the ground. The effect is that the painting feels complete, that every part of the canvas is important, not just the figure. Nothing feels arbitrary; in short, you are looking at a painting, not a picture of a dancer.

The two large paintings Canadian Geese (1996-96) and Four Views (1998-99) are compelling, if sometimes confusing, compositions in which Rothenberg attempts to reconcile several different viewpoints within the same painting. She experiments and takes chances, which conveys an excitement and a curiosity that makes these paintings successful. To see this experimental quality combined with the facility of an artist who really knows how to paint, how to exploit her medium and make oil paint do things you never thought it could do, makes this exhibit relevant, important and pleasurable to behold.