Dexter Dalwood

The history paintings of Dexter Dalwood (born 1960) mix periods and styles, as he explores recent history and culture while quoting from works by artists as different as Sigmar Polke and Caspar David Friedrich. Dalwood often creates speculative depictions of historically significant locales, from the celebrity-driven–Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch, the greenhouse where Kurt Cobain’s body was found, the site of Sharon Tate’s murder–to the literary, as in Ezra Pound’s Venice or Rimbaud’s Africa. Dalwood also delights in contrasting two seemingly contradictory styles within the same painting, a supreme example of which is his portrait of Claudia Schiffer, in which a blonde woman gazing into a hand mirror, rendered precisely in the cartoon style of Roy Lichtenstein, is reflected back as a de Kooning Woman painting. This volume accompanies Dalwood’s exhibition at the Kunsthaus CentrePasquArt in Switzerland.