We float through the Matisse show independently, coming
together to revel in the overwhelming color and size of The Snail and the relative subtlety of Oceania, The Sky. Erin found Jazz
to be as remarkable for illustrating his cut paper technique as showcasing his whimsical
handwriting. His drafts for the Vence Chapel had us planning a pilgrimage to
Provence to see the real deal. As we neared the end and The Bell began resembling a butternut squash, we realized it was
time for lunch and headed for the museum’s café. “It’s not amazeballs but they
usually have a nice salad.” Along with smoked salmon, which Erin declared to
be, ”way better than Lidl’s,” we shared some Bayonne ham, a few summer salads
of tomatoes, squash, lentils, and barley and some good sourdough, which I
smothered in butter. As we dig in, she recounts that time when her fate intertwined
with that of Alan Greenspan.
During his tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve from
1987 to 2006, Greenspan gave no broadcast interviews. Seeking insight into his
notoriously cryptic commentary on the economy, in August of 2005, CNBC turned
the microphone over to 18 larger than life portraits of the man himself, painted
by Erin. In a style she describes as “clunky naïvete”, each painting captured
facial expressions that financial analysts read for clues about the future of
the market. Mirroring this idea that confidence in the market is the key its health,
CNBC took Greenspan’s temperature in its analysis of Erin’s paintings. Titles
like, "If You Say So," "I Gotta Tell Ya," and "Humpf”
suggested the humorous futility of these endeavors.
And yet, when the gallery plugged the phone back in after
the CNBC broadcast, it didn’t stop ringing. She sold all 18 paintings and by
the close of a successive show entitled, “Goodbye Greenspan” in 2006, Erin had
painted and sold nearly 50 works of the man. By and large it was Wall Street
bankers who purchased the paintings.
While buyers and media may have attributed Erin’s foray into
Greenspan portraiture to an obsession with the chairman, the paintings can be
interpreted as an extension of her interest in creating multiples. She wondered
what it would mean to create many imperfect copies of an image. In one
exploration of this idea, she revisited a painting of a clown that she made as
a child. Erin went on to paint nearly a dozen clowns, each one slightly different
from the others, for example, some wear spotted collars, while others sport
more minimalist costumes. Four of them were the constant dining companions of
my adolescence, hanging on a wall in our dining room.
In the clown and Greenspan series she was pursuing the
conceptual idea of repetition, rather than emphasizing technical advancement.
As an undergrad at the University of Virginia, some faculty critiqued her
perchance for copying as hindering her development as an artist but it was
exactly that regression to a time before she had the knowledge of art “bearing
down on me” that interested her. In the end, “artists copy all the bloomin’
time.” She interrogated this tradition when she engaged in a back and forth with
photographs of the elusive Federal Reserve chairman and ultimately with her own
work. (For another discussion on the originality of art, see the furor that
Marina Abramovic’s current exhibit at the Serpentine Gallery has inspired with
some critics claiming she’s indebted to Mary Ellen Cowell for the “nothing” at
the center of her show, while others note that art-making is a never-ending
dialogue.)
With Greenspan about to step down as chairman of the Federal
Reserve and his legacy being widely celebrated, the timing of the show may have
had something to do with the paintings’ popularity. Erin compares Wall Street’s
fascination with the paintings to teenagers expressing their adulation for
sports and pop stars by hanging posters of them on their bedroom walls. For a
class of financial experts in an era of accumulation the Greenspan portraits then
represented a glorification of their adult idol.
But Erin is not bothered by her work taking on a life of its
own. While her intentions with the project—the “fanaticism of creating 35 Alan
Greenspan paintings”—may have been missed by those who have since commissioned
her to paint portraits, she finds it amusing that the world of finance would
seek Greenspan’s wisdom through her paintings. “I’m a people pleaser.” Seeing
people take pictures of themselves in front of her paintings was thrilling. "I've
never had people respond so positively to my work," Erin told the
Washington Post in 2005.
In her post-Greenspan life, Erin earned her MFA at Goldsmiths.
Since graduating in 2007, she has found art-making to be a lonelier endeavor compounded
by the limited communication implicit in raising young children. Towards the
end of our lunch Erin tells me that she’s getting rid of her studio to focus on
being a mum. A step away from art, one might ask? And yet, embracing that
one-way conversation may just be the answer to her search for a creative
dialogue. How many other 5 year olds get to celebrate their birthday with a
barge ride on the nearby canal, a piñata cake, and pulled pork?