Three reasons I feel differently about Vin Vicini

[scottedelman]

Steve Thompson, aware of my strong feelings about the paintings of Sharon Moody, alerted me to the comics-inspired art of Vin Vicini. Funny thing is, in spite of what could be seen as superficial similarities, the new images I saw didn’t bother me at all. So let’s take a look at a couple of Vicini’s paintings, and then I’ll explain why.

First, a

Comments

[rab62]

For whatever it's worth, I agree with the distinction you're drawing here…but if someone didn't see the difference, I'm not sure I could put it into words. Vicini succeeds in treating those rolled up comics as objects sharing space with other objects, and using them to evoke nostalgic associations. But merely depicting the comics as physical objects isn't the point of the work, as it seemed to be with the reproductions of Moody's work you shared here. Vicini is saying something about childhood at a specific moment in American history, a childhood that involved baseball gloves and marbles and crayons and tin toys as well as comic books. That was my childhood, so I look at his work and say "That could be my stuff! Aargh, why did you bend those comics? I want to read them!" It fits in also with his other series such as the retro food packaging or diner paintings: he makes them about more than just the rendering of the object but gives each painting a psychological context as well

[scottedelman]

Ah, but you put your feeling very eloquently into words, perhaps even better than I did.