Peter Cain (artist)

Peter Cain (born 1959, Orange, New Jersey; died New York, New York, 1997) was a painter who was known for his meticulously executed paintings and drawings of mutant cars. His style has been said to combine aspects of Surrealism, Photorealism, and the art of James Rosenquist. He is of the same generation of painters who came to prominence in the 1990s like Elizabeth Peyton, John Currin, Peter Doig, and Karen Kilimnik. He died at age thirty seven of a brain hemorrhage having completed sixty-three paintings over the course of his short career. He was represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York during his lifetime.

Work

Cain studied at the Parsons School of Design from 1977-1980 and the School of Visual Arts from 1980-1982. His early paintings derived their subjects from advertisements for used automobiles. He then made collages by which he could distort and abbreviate the original car’s form. In "Pathfinder", included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial (1992-93, oil on linen), the front fender and headlights of a black SUV have been merged with the rear third of the vehicle. The car’s hood, front doors and cab have completely disappeared, and the newly transmogrified Pathfinder has then been tipped up on its trunk against a solid white ground. Writing on a similar painting, critic Jerry Saltz said that the car paintings “cleverly question the nature of intelligence by presenting the image of a ‘thing’ that is knowable and unclassifiable in a painting that is like a filmstrip of a painting all collapsed and run together in to a single dense frame.” [“Wild Thing: Peter Cain’s "Untitled"” "Arts Magazine", March 1990, 14]

In 1996, Cain digressed from cars to Los Angeles gas stations and strip malls a year before his death. The numerous signs which dot store windows and around the pump have not been filled in except for their ground color. The face that greets Los Angeles car culture is eerily blank, and what can be understood as foliage is rendered in micro-faceted and hallucinogenic masses of green paint. The gas stations are spare in their content, but rich in their painterliness. When the Los Angeles paintings had their posthumous premier at the Matthew Marks Gallery in 1997, they were praised by critics for challenging the conventional wisdom that painting’s capacity to express genuine emotion was long gone. Peter Schjeldahl lamented, “I had trouble with Cain’s car pictures while being enchanted by the promise of his painterly gifts and ambition. Now we see the beginning of the promise’s fulfillment in the same instant as its end: an exceptional talent nipped in mid-blossoming, just short of full bloom. ” ["Hail and Fairwell", "Village Voice", February 25, 1997.]

Exhibitions

Peter Cain’s work has been the subject of several solo shows at the Matthew Marks Gallery and was included in the 1993 and 1995 Whitney Biennials.

References

elected Bibliography

Books on Peter Cain

*Cain, Peter. "More Courage and Less Oil". New York: Matthew Marks Gallery, 2002.
*Cain, Peter. "The Los Angeles Pictures". New York: Matthew Marks Gallery, 2006.

Articles on Peter Cain

*Raczka, Tony. "Demfamiliarizing an American Icon." "Artweek", November 15, 1990.
*Saltz, Jerry. "Wild Thing: Peter Cain’s Untitled." "Arts Magazine", March 1990, 13-14.
*Saltz, Jerry. "Carpe Diem." "The Village Voice", October 23-29, 2002, 67.
*Schjeldahl, Peter. "Hail and Farewell." "The Village Voice", February 25, 1997.
*Smith, Roberta. "A New Surge of Growth Just as Death Cut It Off." "New York Times", February 14, 1997.

External links

* [http://www.matthewmarks.com/index.php?n=1&a=129&im=1 Peter Cain works, biography and exhibition chronology at Matthew Marks]