Art in America
November 2006
Herron Galleries, Indiana University

Robert Lostutter
Retrospective Exhibition
By Claire Wolf Krantz

This 25‑year retrospective of Robert Lostutter's career com­prised 49 glowing watercolor paintings and graphite drawings. His images depict men's heads transformed by fragments of foli­age or plumage into strange and fantastic mask like forms. Rang­ing in scale from 2 inches square to 40 by 50 inches, the works reflect his personal engagement with birds and flowers. While his earlier works express a certain sexuality and violence, his recent paintings have become more portrait like but no less wildly imaginative. Long associ­ated with the Chicago Imagists, Lostutter also writes richly evoca­tive poems, several of which were shown with the works.

The exhibition examined Lostutter's methodology by dis­playing 31 preliminary sketches and paint swatches as well as studies for 18 larger paintings; the studies are finished works in themselves. It's interesting to see all the decisions that went into the final works. His technique is unusual: tiny strokes of opaque watercolor paint are built up on heavy paper to create precise, seemingly static pictures of fantas­tical creatures. Yet a closer look reveals compositional choices and color relationships that animate the pictures. In "Red Masdevalia" (2004), the vibrant purple nose and green crest like hair and the opposing thrusts of two red flower petals add a dynamic energy to the entire configuration.

Although his basic imagery has remained similar throughout his career, Lostutter continues to experiment with his technique and to deepen the pictures' emotional content as the colors become richer and more beautiful, the shapes of the flowers more alluring, and the birds' beaks and crests more assertive. In his earlier works, the foliage, flower petals or birdlike features seem added on to the heads, whereas in the later works these elements have been so skillfully integrated into the human features that the faces appear to belong to an entirely different species, both gorgeous and terrible, and exerting a strange attraction.

Until lately, Lostutter's brilliant colors were influenced by several trips to Mexico, where he photo­graphed birds and flowers. Recent visits to Thailand have led to modifications in both color and subject matter: in some works, the colors are less flam­boyant and the heads elongate into the shapes of Thai stupas. In "Lepanthes‑After Thailand"(2000), a vinelike rope is tightly wound around the head, causing the flesh to crinkle, its tip piercing the cheek. Providing a counter­point to the implied brutality of the image, the face sprouts a beautiful orchid from its nose and cheek.

Lostutter's paintings are simul­taneously grotesque and beauti­ful, the amalgam of man and nature so perfect and so disquiet­ing in its implications that we are drawn to examine them closely and to remember them vividly.

The exhibition traveled to the Chicago Cultural Center, July 29­ - September 24.

Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.