Growing up on a farm in West Texas, Michael Tole was perusing his family's 1956 Collier's Encyclopedia when the color plates of Baroque paintings caught his atten-tion. Today, he paints inventive Baroque and Rococo figurative extravaganzas that look like they could be part of a Renaissance art collection.
A solo exhibition of new and recent paintings, Pictures from the Queen's Collection, is now on view at Ferrara Showman Gallery in New Orleans through February 8.
"In my current work, I am writing letters to art history, literature and mythology in an attempt to reflect the social changes that have reshaped our society over the past century," explains Tole, "As part of this agenda, I explore the evolution of gender norms, power dynamics and representation within Western visual and literary culture, and what this implies for the negotiation between aesthetic pleasure, justice and our culturally specific discourse on beauty." Exploring the more masculine Baroque and more feminine and capricious Rococo styles, Tole often muses about being a forger, placing paintings in collections next to Tintoretto and Caravaggio, playing with viewers' preconceptions and making them look more closely to discover the anachronism.
He explains, "My youth was filled not with KISS and Madonna, but Carole King and NPR, It was a head-spin-ning, ideological melee combining the most restrictive elements of feminism, Marxism and Reaganism. The only thing I felt sure of was that for every pleasure, someone paid the price. This will likely always form the core of my moral being as it is too deeply ingrained for me let it go.. and there is too much evidence to support it. Yet how can one argue in favor of life devoid of beauty and pleasure?
The Dionysian impulse is an innate part of human nature, and a life devoid of pleasure has little appeal."
He says his most recent work received its impetus when, "I caught a glimpse of my preteen daughters watching music videos on their iPad as I chopped veggies for dinner. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught glimpses of music videos featuring Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry and Doja Cat gyrating across the tiny screen. A better parent might have snatched the iPad away, but I was overcome with hallucinatory visions of this pop diva pantheon dancing through the painted ceilings of Versailles and countless Bavarian chapels. Watching these videos, I observed that they employed an aesthetic that rested comfortably within Baroque and Rococo parameters, exhibiting chiaroscuro, ostentatious displays of wealth, over-the-top emotionalism, fantasy, self-aggrandizement, pastel color schemes, gender fluidity (a trait more Rococo than Baroque), and heaping piles of conventionally attractive young women in provocative poses.
"Pictures from the Queen's Collection is conceived of as a connoisseur's collection rather than an artist's oeuvre. In it, the viewer finds Caravaggisti genre scenes of women mechanics alongside Rococo-esque DIY thirst traps-similar subjects but treated in different styles, thus prompting the viewer to ponder the embedded meaning in those disparate styles.
The Carthaginian general Hannibal crossed the Alps in 218-219 B.C. to invade Italy with a large army of African and Iberian mercenaries and 38 elephants. The elephants' bellows, large size and their attacking with their tusks terrified the Roman army. Hannibal lost tens of thousands of soldiers and all but one of his elephants, however.
Tole felt there were "a lot of visual things to work with" in the story of Hannibal but, since so much has been written about him he created two "fictionalized history paintings of Hannah Belle (my gender transtormed Hannibal Barca) crossing the Alps into Italy, but the battle scenes are rendered with the contradictorily feminine-coded Rococo style, which tends to neutralize the violence into decoration.
This relationship of gendered style to our perceptions of seriousness, or silliness merits a deeper, conscious consideration by our culture."
In Hannah Belle's Army Harassed by Alpine Tribesmen, he says he worked with a "pastel Rococo color scheme that is not natural for me-how to control contrast while keeping the pastels still rich and full and maintain atmosphere. It's a serious subject matter but painted in a playful Rococo style-as if Coachella turned into a riot."
Hannah Belle Leading Her Forces at the Battle of Trebia is "fairly balanced with Baroque and Rococo," he explains. "War is coded as masculine. What happens when it's painted as more decorative?"
Receptions for Pictures from the Queen's Collection will be held January 4 and February 1 during Arts District New Orleans' First Saturday Gallery Openings. •