Take It from the Masters: Elise Ansel Re-Reads and Reinterprets the Past at Danese/Corey

Elise Ansel’s stunning show goes to the heart of the relationship between artists practicing today and those of the past. Ansel investigates the “dialogues” her paintings establish with the great masters and gives new life to a tradition that extends back to Miró’s 1928 deconstructions of Dutch interiors and ahead to contemporary artists like Mike Bidlo with his facsimile “not-bys.”

In this way, the modern-day artist begins as a spectator, viewing art, assimilating it, and translating it. The aesthetics of copying, appropriating, and parodying are all in play, and Ansel moves this practice further along in the directions adumbrated in Danese/Corey’s recent “Ref-er-enced show, which gathered together many artists, including Ansel, involved in re-reading the past.