John John Jesse – Cradle to the Grave (2005)
I feel like John John Jesse takes the worst bits of Klimt (the tendency to over encumber his paintings with decorative elements) and Ernst (decalcomania) filters them through the lust, depravity and mania of drug-fueled debaucherous punk rock themed orgies.
It’s like the first reaction to any painting is to move beyond the improbably ripped (and oft-ineffectively safety pinned shirts) revealing even more improbably perfect breasts and shift into a sort of Where’s Waldo spot the drug references–in this case: five (5) bottles of booze (Jameson in the right hand of the rabbit headed lady, some sort of cognac between the legs of the pink knickered woman at frame left, a bottle of wine in the knapsacke of the woman in the tank top, the Budweiser in her hand and then a bottle in the style of Jack Daniels of Die Young (presumably whiskey) that has been turned into an 80 proof alcohol IV), a big old Bill Cosby’s Secret Ingredient and two prescription bottles.
I’m going to completely gloss over the ghost/homunculus/fetal alcohol syndrome fetus with umbilical cord. (Like WTF-even?)
Now, by all accounts I’ve done more than my fair share of drugs in my life. Hell, I continue to enjoy a number of illicit substances. And really the in-your-face punk-rock flavored transgressive nihilism that Jesse trades in is unquestionably seductive to me.
But it’s easy to point to the sex, drugs or rock and roll-ness of the work as being what attracts and repels the viewer in equal measure.
What I keep coming back for is honestly the way he depicts women. It’s been noted repeatedly that most of the folks he paints are his friends. And to me that feels like the most important take away from his work.
I’m not sure what it says about me–probably more about my being born in the wrong time (New York’s Lower East Side in the 80s would’ve absolutely been my scene, you have no idea), but the way the women he paints can look simultaneously self-possessed, stoned to the gills, standoffish, available and maybe like they aren’t sure whether they are trying to feel something other than numb or numb their feelings, resonates with me in a way that leaves me entirely unnerved.
Acetylene Eyes 