{"id":503,"date":"2015-02-13T23:06:05","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T04:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=503"},"modified":"2017-11-26T19:48:16","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T00:48:16","slug":"mike-lashs-ugly-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2015\/02\/13\/mike-lashs-ugly-paintings\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Lash\u2019s \u2018Ugly Paintings\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Lash\u2019s \u201cstated purpose behind his art is to \u2018make stuff, mostly stuff that has no real reason to exist, but now, they do exist,\u2019\u201d Patrick Collier writes in introduction to Lash\u2019s exhibition \u201cUgly Paintings,\u201d<\/a> on view for the time being at the Ugly Mug Diner, 122 Washington St., Salem, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

I first encountered Lash and his art years ago when he was based in Chicago, where he rose to become director of the city\u2019s public art program. These days he resides in Salem, where he\u2019s operated \u201cMike\u2019s Museum,\u201d<\/a> at first an actual gallery, but now\u2014if I understand correctly\u2014more of a state of mind.<\/p>\n

His new show has around 50 paintings done on squares of plywood depicting flowers, faces, whales, pigeons, and doodles suggesting penises or butts. They\u2019re part child\u2019s drawings, part bathroom graffiti. Atop each, he\u2019s scrawled: \u201cUgly painting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"picMikeLash150206_0584w\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI firmly believe there is no such thing as an ugly painting,\u201d Lash says\u2014as quoted by Collier.<\/p>\n

Right. But scrawling \u201cUgly painting\u201d across each one, a friend I went with argued, helps you get past their purposeful ugliness to actually sort of seriously consider them. They\u2019re \u201cbad\u201d paintings, and actually often quite annoying, but satires of fine art, offered with a kind of brazen, deadpan humor that\u2019s unusual around these parts\u2014but feels very Chicago.<\/p>\n

At the Feb. 6 opening reception, I got into a conversation with Lash about what really makes a painting ugly. We circled around it for a bit. Finally, he said, \u201cIt\u2019s harder than it looks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photos by Greg Cook.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"picMikeLash150206_0601\"<\/a> \"picMikeLash150206_0597w\"<\/a> \"picMikeLash150206_0592w\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Lash\u2019s \u201cstated purpose behind his art is to \u2018make stuff, mostly stuff that has no real reason to exist, but now, they do exist,\u2019\u201d Patrick Collier writes in introduction to Lash\u2019s exhibition \u201cUgly Paintings,\u201d on view for the time being at the Ugly Mug Diner, 122 Washington St., Salem, Massachusetts. I first encountered Lash […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3993,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/3993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}