catalogue essay, September 2001

Barbara Ravizza: More Conversations

More complicated, funny, poignant, multi-layered Conversation Pieces from Barbara Ravizza. This series, More Conversation Pieces, (the first installment shown at Jernigan Wicker in 1998), continues Ravizza's potent conversations about important cultural issues between archetypal art historical figures, evocative images and provocative icons.

Blending art historical references with popular culture, Ravizza creates modern day parables. These are purposeful and wry odes to big timeless topics such as beauty, death, good, evil, loss, and much more. Ravizza generates these surprising, drama-filled mysterious artworks by coupling refined painted images with sometimes playful, sometimes painful text and objects. Selecting images that speak to her -- "An icon stays in our unconscious or conscious...collapsing time" says Ravizza -- the Conversation Pieces series began with Ravizza engaging in a dialogue with the Mona Lisa. She soon realized that she also had a few things to say to a variety of images and actual people including Michelangelo's David, contemporary meter maids and Marilyn Monroe (who becomes a recurring image for Ravizza).

Still lives are one method that Ravizza uses to begin her loaded conversations. In Conversation Piece #37 Ravizza uses the visual language of an expired parking meter to address her own parking tickets as well as to reference societal anxieties such as time and mortality. Written on the bottom right is "TICK-TOCK" which, when aided by collaged images such as Munch's scream painting and advertisements for Nicorette gum, creates a rising tension. Also appearing is an actual quarter (to feed the meter and perhaps stave off the inevitable- both a parking ticket and death) and an image of a meter fairy. Ravizza uses another everyday image in Conversation Piece #30. With the words "The habit" above the main image of a coffee cup, she investigates our daily habits. Common phrases we often say without thinking, (out of habit), such as, "I just want somebody to love", "how are you" and "fine" are written around the central image. Ravizza adds the letters ITY to EQUAL (an artificial sweetener packet) making the word EQUAL-ITY (something perhaps lacking in our daily routine). A real key (to what?) and a matchstick (to help light a fire and get us out of our daily habits?) add other layers of possibilities of interpretation to the mix.

Ravizza investigates loneliness and nostalgia in two works depicting very different dwellings. In Conversation Piece #33, Ravizza references emptiness and falsehoods through a Hopper painting of a desolate storefront. Through encircling the central image with newspaper clippings of Hollywood icon Brad Pitt, an actress without a head and writing the word NOIR at the top, Ravizza looks at the dark side of Hollywood and asks what is behind the façade of a star. Another kind of abode, a 1950's suburban house addresses memory and nostalgia in Conversation Piece #34. Visual clues denoting nostalgia for the past and a romanticization of the past include a stopped watch, an ice cream cone and the children's exercise 2 +2 = 4.

Two empty high-heeled shoes, awkwardly teetering, are the centerpiece in Conversation Piece #31. Text at the top reads "A MISSstep" with Ravizza turning "Do you like my shoes" into "Do you like me?" on the bottom left. Viewers can feel the desperation, the urgency of the question, of the complex act of wearing high heels which tend to hobble women yet make them attractive at the same time. An actual scissors, half a playing card of a queen and the back of a penny back are other visual clues complicating the narrative.

Portraits are another way Ravizza references potent social issues. Marilyn Monroe, a favorite image for Ravizza, shows up in two works of this series. She connotes many things including sex, power, vulnerability, control, lack of control, consumption of image and manipulation. In Conversation Piece #32, a cut out newspaper clipping of contemporary (aging) actress Meryl Streep says "Happy 75th Birthday" to an image of Marilyn Monroe - a black and white publicity photo of a forever young and sexy Marilyn. Ravizza also collages a picture of a tomato soup can (referring to Pop Art, Andy Warhol, and his use of the image of Marilyn), and depictions of people, both men and women looking at (and wanting, or wanting to be like) Marilyn. Additionally, Ravizza adds a real mirror to suggest the role the viewer plays in the construction of icons - modern day idols we both worship and fear. Monroe appears again in this series in Conversation Piece #29. Here, a full figure Marilyn (looking like a statue-esque goddess) is surrounded by the statue of liberty waving goodbye, a genuine dollar bill, an actual matchbook that asks "Do They Ever Give it Back?" and a torn out paper reading SAVE, which Ravizza has added ME to. This mix reveals a poignancy, a vulnerability, unfulfilled expectations and Marilyn (as well as us?) trying so hard to be liked (and loved) and redeemed.

Ravizza tackles the beauty myth in Conversation Piece #36 using Botticelli 's painting of The Three Graces - three beautiful young women dancing in a circle - as the central image. "Keep young and beautiful if you want to be loved" Ravizza writes at the top and "Hope, Faith and Charity" on the right hand side. Contrasting with this image that romanticizes femininity is text such as "ouch, ouch, ouch" and "Skin Care Crisis, Can you Cope?" along with items about hair removal, menstruation, menopause and vaginal cream, all serving to reveal the realities of womanhood behind such seemingly effortless loveliness.

Along with the traditionally female topics just discussed, Ravizza also presents traditionally male issues for our consideration. Another art historical painting is employed in Conversation Piece #38 where the words WIN/LOSE surround an image of the painting The Card Players by Cezanne. Ideas of competition, greed and luck surface as this game of cards turns into the game of life. Ravizza questions what makes a winner or a loser in our society and the luck involved in love, wealth (or lack of it) and even war. NOT me is written above the word LOSE and next to a chilling text about war. And finally, going back to where it all started, is Conversation Piece #32 in which the image of Michelangelo's sculpture of David is utilized to discuss constructions of masculinity and the myth of the hero. Good/Evil is written on the top and smaller images of other heroic icons such as Superman and Elvis Presley appear, but the addition of an ad for wart removal and a likeness of Miss Piggy saying "My Hero" punctures the myth.

Speaking from her own rich experiences as a woman living through the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st, Ravizza shows the underside, along with the glory, of our heroes and idols, our icons and mythologies, our everyday habits and fears. "Not everything is clear and obvious," states Ravizza, "I want to allow the viewer to figure things out". Ravizza does indeed include the viewer in her unpredictable and fascinating conversations, timeless conversations about the intersections between our society, between our foibles and our fantasies, and us.

essay by Amy Berk
artist, critic, educator,
editor for www.stretcher.org
San Francisco, August 2001