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When Doug Argue stirs an oceanic vista, likening a school of fish to the world swirling outside his studio window, he taps a great art historical tradition: metamorphosis. Ovid's epic opens with a creation myth and follows with its own theme and variations, irresistible tales of transformation from Daphne to Arachne and Europa. For Titian, Rubens, Michelangelo, Gerome, Bellini, Rodin, Dali and so many others, these have been thematic catnip. Argue captures one brilliant, Kantian aspect of Ovid, the “on-and-on” nature of the sublime. The recursive aspect of his fish, like the birds of M.C. Escher, can suggest the perpetuum mobile of a Bach fugue and its illusion of infinity that comes from mirrored themes, just as inside the multitudes of fine brushstrokes in Argue's paintings there is the potential to become lost.
For Argue to collate his mesmerizing paintings of fish with the compositional strategy of theme and variations, which has served not just composers but artists and poets so well, is brilliant. Think of the serial works of Monet or Warhol, or the poetry of Wallace Stevens, and you will grasp how change is revealed in stages just as Darwin and Humboldt tracked the evolution of biodiversity through multiplicity. Argue's great achievement in this exhibition is not just the conceptual brilliance of this universal idea, but the technical bravura necessary to carry it off on canvas. Argue is a virtuoso, capable of building the illusion fish by fish that carries the argument to us. We are caught in his net of painterly innovation.
Banner Photo from Exhibition: Sarah Blesener
Exhibition Photos: Doug Argue
Biography
Doug Argue is an artist based in New York City. After attending art classes at Bemidji State University and the University of Minnesota from 1980 to 1983, Argue's early figurative works were influenced by German Expressionism. During his two different trips to Venice, he was deeply moved by such 16th-century Italian painters as Titian and Tintoretto, whose massive Crucifixion moved him to begin creating more large-scale works.
When Doug Argue stirs an oceanic vista, likening a school of fish to the world swirling outside his studio window, he taps a great art historical tradition: metamorphosis. Ovid's epic opens with a creation myth and follows with its own theme and variations, irresistible tales of transformation from Daphne to Arachne and Europa. For Titian, Rubens, Michelangelo, Gerome, Bellini, Rodin, Dali and so many others, these have been thematic catnip. Argue captures one brilliant, Kantian aspect of Ovid, the “on-and-on” nature of the sublime. The recursive aspect of his fish, like the birds of M.C. Escher, can suggest the perpetuum mobile of a Bach fugue and its illusion of infinity that comes from mirrored themes, just as inside the multitudes of fine brushstrokes in Argue's paintings there is the potential to become lost.
For Argue to collate his mesmerizing paintings of fish with the compositional strategy of theme and variations, which has served not just composers but artists and poets so well, is brilliant. Think of the serial works of Monet or Warhol, or the poetry of Wallace Stevens, and you will grasp how change is revealed in stages just as Darwin and Humboldt tracked the evolution of biodiversity through multiplicity. Argue's great achievement in this exhibition is not just the conceptual brilliance of this universal idea, but the technical bravura necessary to carry it off on canvas. Argue is a virtuoso, capable of building the illusion fish by fish that carries the argument to us. We are caught in his net of painterly innovation.
Banner Photo from Exhibition: Sarah Blesener
Exhibition Photos: Doug Argue
Biography
Doug Argue is an artist based in New York City. After attending art classes at Bemidji State University and the University of Minnesota from 1980 to 1983, Argue's early figurative works were influenced by German Expressionism. During his two different trips to Venice, he was deeply moved by such 16th-century Italian painters as Titian and Tintoretto, whose massive Crucifixion moved him to begin creating more large-scale works.
When Doug Argue stirs an oceanic vista, likening a school of fish to the world swirling outside his studio window, he taps a great art historical tradition: metamorphosis. Ovid's epic opens with a creation myth and follows with its own theme and variations, irresistible tales of transformation from Daphne to Arachne and Europa. For Titian, Rubens, Michelangelo, Gerome, Bellini, Rodin, Dali and so many others, these have been thematic catnip. Argue captures one brilliant, Kantian aspect of Ovid, the “on-and-on” nature of the sublime. The recursive aspect of his fish, like the birds of M.C. Escher, can suggest the perpetuum mobile of a Bach fugue and its illusion of infinity that comes from mirrored themes, just as inside the multitudes of fine brushstrokes in Argue's paintings there is the potential to become lost.
For Argue to collate his mesmerizing paintings of fish with the compositional strategy of theme and variations, which has served not just composers but artists and poets so well, is brilliant. Think of the serial works of Monet or Warhol, or the poetry of Wallace Stevens, and you will grasp how change is revealed in stages just as Darwin and Humboldt tracked the evolution of biodiversity through multiplicity. Argue's great achievement in this exhibition is not just the conceptual brilliance of this universal idea, but the technical bravura necessary to carry it off on canvas. Argue is a virtuoso, capable of building the illusion fish by fish that carries the argument to us. We are caught in his net of painterly innovation.
Banner Photo from Exhibition: Sarah Blesener
Exhibition Photos: Doug Argue
Biography
Doug Argue is an artist based in New York City. After attending art classes at Bemidji State University and the University of Minnesota from 1980 to 1983, Argue's early figurative works were influenced by German Expressionism. During his two different trips to Venice, he was deeply moved by such 16th-century Italian painters as Titian and Tintoretto, whose massive Crucifixion moved him to begin creating more large-scale works.
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