Heavily involved in New York's alternative art scene in the 1970s and 1980s, painter Jane Dickson is known for her hazy and nostalgic depictions of New York's seedy streets painted on unconventional surfaces.
Read MoreBorn in Chicago, Dickson completed a BA at Harvard in 1973 after earlier taking some classes at l'École des Beaux Arts in Paris. This was followed in 1976 by a Studio Diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Moving to New York City in 1977, Dickson took a job programming Times Square's first Spectacolor billboard. In 1980, with husband and fellow artist Charlie Ahearn, Dickson moved into the Times Square neighbourhood, where she would live and work for several decades, while raising two children. Drawn to the neighbourhood's dazzling night-time signage, she started taking photos and making drawings and oil stick paintings of her luminous surroundings.
Immersed in the downtown art scene, Dickson worked with collectives such as Fashion Moda and Collaborative Projects Inc. (Colab), and found herself exhibiting alongside artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf, and Kiki Smith. She participated in Colab's iconic 1980 exhibitions Times Square Show and The Real Estate Show.
Jane Dickson's figurative painting, drawings, and prints offer nostalgic and dream-like reveries of American life, often painted on unconventional surfaces such as Astroturf, carpet, vinyl, insulation, and sandpaper.
Drawn to the flourescent signage of Times Square, Dickson painted numerous images of night-time scenes in the neighbourhood in which she lived for almost three decades. Paradise Alley (1983), among many others, was painted from her 6th floor window, looking down on 8th Avenue and 43rd Street.
Her images depict Times Square's seedy hotels and apartments, as well as its many pornographic movie theatres, strip clubs, and stores selling adult entertainment. Critic Glenn O'Brien once said of her paintings in a 1988 issue of ArtForum, 'They present beauty as the incidental by-product of the American way of life.' More recent paintings such as Dreams 2 (2018), Cameo 2 (2019), and Devil Below (2020) nostalgically revisit these scenes.
Jane Dickinson's 'Peepland' series from the 1990s portray the seedy underside of Times Square in the 1980s. Saturated in warm red tones, the paintings depict the peep shows and erotic live performances endemic at the time. Claustrophobically framed in restrictive compositions such as circular canvases, they convey the voyeuristic sensation of these illicit pursuits.
Dickson continues to explore these themes in paintings such as 3 Graces (2017), a red-saturated peep show triptych with obvious art historical references.
In the late 1990s and the early 2000s, Dickson's artistic influence expanded from the lights of the city to the homes and ordinary spaces of America's suburbs. Depicting frontal profiles of suburban homes in oil paint on thick carpet, her 'Almost Home' paintings possess a moody atmospheric haze evoking dreamlike sensations of memory. Later paintings like Savon 1 (2002) and Auto Zone (2007) offer a hazy vision of local streets and commercial spaces painted on AstroTurf.
While people often appear within the environments Dickson creates, the artist has also focused exclusively on the human figure. Dickson's 'Revelers' paintings (1990) present portraits of drunken and jubilant party-goers. In her 'Trust Me' series (1991–2015), the artist presents muted black-and-white portraits of friends, artists, musicians, and pets, as well as herself, in a signature tondo format.
Dickson has completed several works for public spaces commissioned by New York's Creative Time, Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), and Radio Shack, among other organisations. She presented her site-specific work 'Bride' in a former Adult Video World storefront as part of Creative Time's 42nd Street Art Project (1993–1994). In 2008, Dickson completed a set of mosaics of her 'Revelers' for the MTA in Times Square's 42nd Street station. In 2015, Dickson also took part in Jeffrey Deitch's Coney Art Walls project on Coney Island.
Dickson has received several residences and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts in Drawing in 1985. In 2014, she was elected to the National Academy of Art.
Jane Dickson has been the subject of both solo exhibition and group exhibitions internationally.
Solo exhibitions include HOT HOT HOT, Howl! Happening, New York (2020); Out of Here Paintings: 1999–2013, Omi International Arts, Ghent, New York (2013); Dreamland, SAOH Gallery, Tokyo (2012); Almost There, Jersey City Museum, New Jersey (2006); Out of Here, Museum of Contemporary Art, Fort Lauderdale (2001); Peepland: Paintings by Jane Dickson 1983–1993, Long Beach Museum of Art, California (1994); Selected Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1991); City Maze, Fashion Moda, New York (1980).
Group exhibitions include Basquiat: The Artist and His New York Scene, Schunck Museum of Art, Heerlen, Netherlands (2019); New York Underground: East Village in the 80s, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2018); Painting 2.0, Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2015); Art in the Streets, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles (2011); Looking at Music: Side 2, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009); East Village, New Museum, New York (2004); Urban Mythologies, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (1999); New Portrait, MoMA P.S.1, New York (1983); Times Square Show, Collaborative Projects, New York (1980).
Dickson's website can be found here and her Instagram can be found here.
Michael Irwin | Ocula | 2022
