{"data":{"id":"3885","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":3885,"topgoose_id":1100,"tms_id":3885,"display_name":"Lari Pittman","sort_name":"Pittman Lari","display_date":"1952–","begin_date":"1952","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eLari Pittman’s paintings present frenetic fields of images, symbols, and patterns layered in intricately interlocking planes. Although their surfaces seem almost mechanical in their perfection, the artist executes the works unassisted, sketching out his compositions in a few sentences then using stencils, masks, and air brushes to create a dense pictorial structure. Pittman attended the California Institute of the Arts in the mid-1970s, where he studied with painters \u003ca href=\"/artists/930\"\u003eElizabeth Murray\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/artists/245\"\u003eVija Celmins\u003c/a\u003e. He joined members of the influential feminist art program in discussions about the gender bias inherent in art history and in examining works by artists marginalized from the mainstream. He embraced the “decorative” and incorporated explicitly sexual images in his paintings, making reference to gay culture, his own identity as a gay man, and also to his mixed American Protestant and Colombian Roman Catholic background. Aiming to make gregarious paintings that can speak to many different audiences, he produces works encompassing contradictory outlooks and impulses— brash to refined, giddy to despairing. “The work is a record of what the world we live in looks like,” Pittman has said.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePittman exhibited works from his series \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/8379\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Decorated Chronology of\nInsistence and Resignation\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e in the \u003ca href=\"/exhibitions/biennial-1993\"\u003e1993 Whitney Biennial\u003c/a\u003e. The series was completed in 1995 and contains more than forty ambitious paintings. In them Pittman layers and juxtaposes cartoonlike renderings of objects and bodies with ornate patterns and corporate logos. In \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/8523\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eUntitled #16\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e,\na colorful array of variously scaled fairy-\ntale images, both sweet and grotesque,\nis overlaid at top and bottom with emblems\nof credit cards, a primary means of\naccessing enchantment in today’s world.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500115001","wikidata_id":"Q13593213","created_at":"2017-08-30T16:05:15.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-25T01:30:07.309-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/3885/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/3885/exhibitions"}}}}