Homework 3, Vivar

Malcom Liepke, oil on canvas, (Title unknown), (date unknown), (dimensions unknown)

 

Liepke has a lot of sexy figurative work, mostly involving beautiful women with sharp glances, messy bed hair, slightly parted lips, and delicate exposed shoulders; what I find particularly interesting about this specific piece though is that while we can safely assume the subject is a conventionally attractive woman, this piece is noticeably not as sexually alluring as the others, all things considered. (1) I don't believe there is a specific audience in mind, as a woman's figure has been generally accepted as very aesthetically pleasing. (2) I read the narrative as a very casual setting: simply a woman taking her bra off for a shower/bed/relaxation. (3a) It's a simple figure painting, but I find it to be very effective in drawing a viewer's eye in. I find Liepke's work to be beautifully painted; I think he finds a really wonderful balance between texture and realistic colours, and that is working so well in this image. The background is a combination of very muted, dull colours, but still is engaging because of how realistic it is--how easy it is to imagine the rest of the room.

(3b) I don't have any critique on this piece in particular, but rather on Malcom Liepke's overall work. Even though he has brilliant texture and colour, the female faces Liepke paints (though individually extremely conventionally attractive at first) suffer from same-face syndrome after leafing through many of his pieces, and soon the subjects lose my interests because of how un-unique they become.