SFMoMa's New Work: Mary Lovelace O'Neal
March 16 through October 20, 2024
While visiting SFMoMA, I was able to see the New Work: Mary Lovelace O’Neal exhibition located on the second floor of the museum. O’Neal has been creating artwork for sixty years and takes an experimental approach through her use of materials, color, and choice of stylization. Her paintings are a mixture of abstraction and figuration that combine broad references to mythology and include personal narratives.
Gallery space of the O'Neal exhibition
The high contrast presented in the artist’s work comes from her consistent usage of a black background supplementing the vivid colors of her figures. O'Neal uses lampblack pigment– literal powdered soot extracted from burning oil that she pushed onto her canvas– which creates a rich, flat, and velvety surface for her to work on with various items such as gasoline and glitter, alongside standard paint.
Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Frances, Mixed Media, 2021-23
Experiencing this show, like all artwork, was much better in person than on-screen. O’Neal’s pieces are huge, effortlessly taking up a majority of the wall space present in the gallery. Despite what one may assume about the prominent use of the artist’s lampblack pigment on such large canvases, the shade was not at all overwhelming. Cut by bright shades of color, and being experienced in a gallery space of white and light wood, the black felt complementary to the child-like figurations.
Mary Lovelace O'Neal, La Pieta, Mixed Media, 2012-23
Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Raining in Milano, Mixed Media, 2021-23
The figuration of the abstract images sparked intrigue and made the experience almost like a game of identification. “Do you see the horses? What about the Pieta reference?” Though art should be subjective, and the takeaway for these works, I would imagine shouldn’t be so literal. These compositions inspire a comfortable wonder and fun. O’Neal has created a distinctive style that sticks through the strong foundations she has built using color and play.
Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Mardi Gras Umbrellas and Fireflies, Mixed Media, 2021-23
Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Dr. Alcocer's Corsets for Horses, Mixed Media, 2021-23
Such interesting work! She certainly has a distinctive medium and style. Did you say that she is Black and the dominant black of her paintings is partly about that. The titles are intriguing but it's hard to see from the pictures how they related to the disjunctive narrative, if there is a narrative. Links to online sources would be good to put. I'll add a link to a short New York Times piece about her, but I don't know if it will be accessible to your blog readers: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/arts/design/mary-lovelace-oneal-activist.html?ugrp=u&unlocked_article_code=1.kE0.OG1l.0K8X1vkXmKF8&smid=url-share
ReplyDeleteThank you for the article link! I believe it is accessible. For further clarification on my thoughts, I had gone into this show by chance, as I was primarily visiting for the Zanele Muholi exhibit, so my prior knowledge of the artist was nonexistent. I wanted to make a separate post on this section of work and tried to express that-- though the imagery wasn't literal-- it seems to plays with the brain. As a viewer, it left me wanting to fill in the blanks with narrative that isn't there. Thank you for sharing the resource on her, she is a very interesting artist.
DeleteHer work is so interesting to look at. Thank you for sharing what you saw. I loved looking at these pieces and your discussion.
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