The Decline Of Western Civilization 2012

Dave Macdowell made this unnamed painting in the 20th Century. It's a real trip, right? The colors are so saturated, like a candy-coated nightmare. It’s like Macdowell is just throwing everything at the canvas, daring us to make sense of it. The surface has this smooth, almost airbrushed quality, which gives the painting a glossy, unreal feel. But then you notice the details, like the drips of "blood" on the bandage, or the way the light catches the cigarette in her mouth. The longer you look, the more you see these little moments of chaos and beauty. The clown sign in the background, smirking out at the viewer, seems to capture the feeling that things are somehow not right. Macdowell's work reminds me a little bit of Lisa Yuskavage, in the way that both artists create these hyper-sexualized, slightly unsettling images of women. But Macdowell has his own thing going on, with all the pop culture references and dark humor thrown into the mix. He leaves us to make our own conclusions.