Both serve the darkly absurd and sardonic. Her words are concise and her graphics relatively simple, emblematic. Other cards tender apologies for the disproportionate rate of death sentences handed to black people, and for swastikas painted on synagogues.īased in L.A. and long ago an art director for an advertising agency, Rothenberg knows how to boil down a message to its essence, verbally and visually. ![]() "Sorry about the unusually high rate of cancer in your neighborhood," reads a card illustrated with a cloud of grimy factory exhaust that repeats over silhouetted houses. ![]() “Sympathy” is perhaps the only familiar category, but Rothenberg uses it for condolences of a different order. SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter »Īs in a greeting card store, these small paintings in ink and gouache are arranged by category, though most of the headings read more like debate topics (the economy, abortion, civil rights). ( Erika Rothenberg / Charlie James Gallery) Those same hot buttons remain as hot as ever.Įrika Rothenberg’s “Swastika” (detail), gouache and ink on paper, 1992. None of the 80 or so searingly funny greeting cards requires historical context to be decoded 25 years later. Rothenberg addresses aspects of sexual and racial discrimination, poverty, abuse, ignorance and intolerance that are specific to the moment of the works' creation - and turn out to be dismayingly timeless. The relevance of these works today is good news and bad news, a testament to Rothenberg's astuteness. The cover of the first card on the rack that wraps around the room shows hands of assorted colors pointing to the words "You're a Liar, a Manipulator, a Phoney and an Adulterer!" Inside, American flags flutter around the follow-up: "Maybe you should run for president!" You're bound to do a double-take at that date when you step into the Charlie James Gallery in L.A.’s Chinatown, where the MoMA exhibition "House of Cards" has been reprised. Bush were vying for the presidency in summer 1992 when Erika Rothenberg's satirical greeting cards were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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