“Doug Argue: Letters to the Future,” the artist’s retrospective at the
Weisman Art Museum.
On View: June 17 – September 10, 2023
Doug Argue, an alumni of the Arts District, is a name many people might not remember. From 1996-98 he had the 6th floor studio in the California building. If you have ever been to the Weisman Art Museum you might have seen a huge floor-to-ceiling chicken coop painting from 1994. The painting portrays a factory farm where chicken cages go on into what looks like infinity. It’s the headliner painting of Letters to the Future. Studying Weisman patrons, everyone who walks by the 12’x18’ chicken
painting is in awe — pointing out individual chickens — talking about the scale of the painting. The simple chicken turned into a monument of your choice of symbolism of our society. Caged feathered creatures stacked on top of each other, not particularly bothered by you staring at them. A commentary on factory farms and how we create our food? Or just a simple bird that Argue finds intriguing to paint and find meaning in.
The show progresses through Argue’s many styles and periods. His work showcases a highly developed command of drawing and painting skills and genres. Taking on many styles of his art heroes Thomas Hart Benton and Franz Marc in the Gopher Bar 1987. Noted in the show, Argue traveled in the 1990s to Venice to study. There the Italian Renaissance is prevalent. But he flipped the narrative from showcasing the clergy, noblemen and Medici to paintings of chickens, fish and movement of space and time.
While the ordinary subjects of animals are not highfalutin or the regular objects most artisans take on, he elevates their stature with his use of large scale canvases and multiples of each to bring us to a new place to study them.
Showcasing his homage to the Renaissance artists shows that he too can carry on their discoveries and techniques, giving people of our time a mirror of our society on the same scale as them. Argue has been collected internationally. He now lives in New York and his work is in collections at Mia, Walker, Weisman Foundation in Los Angeles and more. The legacy of the artists working in the Arts District continues to bear fruit and will for generations to come.
Written and photos by Josh Blanc