NICOLE EISENMAN (B. 1965)

Monster Movie

die-cut ditone print on wove paper

Sheet: 30 3/4 × 22 3/4 inches (78.1 × 57.8 cm)

Executed in 2020. This work is number 60 from an edition of 100 plus 20 artist's proof and 2 printer's proofs.

PROVENANCE:

Texte zur Kunst, Berlin

Acquired from the above by present owner

NOTE:

Nicole Eisenman has spent over three decades redefining figurative art. A MacArthur Fellow and founding member of the queer feminist collective Ridykeulous, Eisenman is celebrated for her subversive wit, incisive social commentary, and a fearless commitment to the grotesque and the tender alike. Working across painting, drawing, and sculpture, she merges the languages of Western art history, underground comics, and political satire into a visceral, unmistakable style.

Blending absurdist humor with a critical lens on contemporary life, Monster Movie by Nicole Eisenman exemplifies the artist’s singular ability to collapse high and low culture into a single, unruly frame. Known for her prolific engagement with painting, drawing, and printmaking, Eisenman confronts gender, politics, and power with biting wit and unflinching emotional depth.

In Monster Movie, the grotesque becomes a tool of intimacy. The work summons the visual language of comic books and horror tropes, only to dismantle them through painterly expressiveness and psychological nuance. Typical of Eisenman’s practice, the figures are outsized and allegorical—both tragic and cartoonish—inhabiting a liminal space between the everyday and the mythic.