New Art Examiner
March/April 2002
Wood Street Gallery & Sculpture Garden

Claire Prussian
Grim Tales, Digital Wallpaper Installations
by Claire Wolf Krantz

By means of paintings and digital images, Claire Prussian addresses personal issues that also resonate in our society, particularly female sexuality in relation to identity, status, and age, and the effects of childhood experiences on adult personality. Prussian addressed these issues anew in [this] show, presenting five paintings on digitally printed bases, and 14 all-digital prints, framed and hung with patterned ink-jet banners resembling wallpaper.

This work extends ideas developed since the mid-1970s, during the heyday of second-wave feminism, when Prussian gained distinction for her prismacolor drawings of aging women. Offsetting most feminists’ interest in younger women’s issues, Prussian examined the psychological effects of their aging, as well as the changes in social status caused by their loss of youth. Particularly important is Prussian's point of view that women internalise society's objectification of female value as being subservient to their wealthy mates who expect them to be perennially young and beautiful. In subsequent but related work, Prussian examined the ways that elderly women deal with their changed bodies and situation; sometimes with anxiety and depression, and at other times with diversions such as exotic travel and elaborate body decoration. Her newest painted ink-jet prints continue Prussian's interest in ageing. In scenes depicting images of herself and elements from her childhood home and current surroundings, these works exude a sense of dislocation, anxiety, and isolation.    

Her most interesting works, however, are her new two-part digital pieces - small, framed, psychologically intense iris prints hung on top of or next to her "wallpaper." The iris prints are narratives that gloss, from Prussian's adult perspective, well-known children's stories and fairy tales, poems and games. Pictured in potent and lurid images, her versions are violent and alarming. The patterns Prussian created on each strip of "wallpaper" relate to the images and/or story in the iris prints. In Three Blind Mice, a young woman holding a long, sword-like knife covered with blood confronts three grey rats - one rat’s tail is sliced in half and is bleeding. In a curious reversal from the stereotypical innocent-young- girl-versus-disgusting rodents, the rats look like adorable household pets and the girl looks menacing. The accompanying wallpaper has a pattern of mice on a girlishly pink background.

The majority of works in this powerhouse of a show reveals Prussian's subtlety, dry humor, and unnerving honesty about the world in which we live. .  . Sing a Song of Blackbirds is] my favorite. In [it], a child (Prussian's grandson) is King, sitting at a table eating pie from which blackbirds emerge. Mom is standing in the background (isn't that what Moms are for?) watching the action. The wallpaper is frightening and stunning: various-sized black silhouettes of flying birds evoke memories of Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds. These works illuminate the seemingly innocuous but subtextually gruesome stories, images, and events children are exposed to at very young ages, metaphorically calling attention to the subterranean violence in our culture. Superficially, Prussian's ensembles of prints with "wallpaper" imply a domestic context for her pictures, indicating the way artwork is displayed in the home. But more profoundly, the work posits the idea that the fears and anxieties of childhood originate in the home, are transmitted into adulthood and passed onto future generations within the supposed security of middle-class families. Prussian suggests that, unlike in overt domestic conflict, parents inadvertently allow fright into children's lives by telling them these stories. Ultimately, society is affected by the underlying violence that becomes part of the adult's unconscious.

As in her past work, Prussian's impact derives from a deep psychological source, an intense, gut-level recognition of feelings that most people don't necessarily want to allow into consciousness. In these beautiful and disturbing works of art, Prussian successfully addresses our emotional reactions to the physical forces of nature and the cultural forces of the society in which we live.

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.