Marc Dennis is an American artist known for his hyper-realistic, strikingly detailed, and subtly staged paintings that celebrate the charged subjects of beauty and culture. Interested in the transformative possibilities of familiar iconic art historical imagery, Dennis explores the psychological and spiritual relationships we have with art, providing viewers with fresh observations on the relationship of a contemporary audience towards historical painting. He is represented by Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles and Palm Beach. His paintings are in the permanent collections of The Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, Florida, USA; The JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York, New York, USA; The Neuberger Berman Collection, New York, New York, USA; The UBS Corporate Art Collection, Zurich, Switzerland; The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA; The Springfield Museum of Art, Ohio, USA; and The MIN Art Museum, Guadalajara, Mexico amongst others. Dennis was born in 1974, in Danvers, Massachusetts, USA. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, USA.
SP: A semblance of the Western Art historical canon can be observed in your artworks. Is it a mode for the viewers to deviate from perceiving neoclassical ideals, or is it to facilitate the viewers to reminisce the brilliance of old European masters?
MD: My intentions are to find new meaning in the lineage of Old Masters’ painting to explore 22 contemporary questions of ownership and pictorial representation. It is a way to give Old Masters’ works a contemporary voice.
SP: Employing elements from Renaissance and traditional western paintings alongside the staple icons from pop-culture – would you refer to this archetype in your artworks as a paradox or an oxymoron?
MD: I refer to it as an intersection. My creative objective has always been to merge basic human emotions, such as love and loss, happiness and sadness, life and death, and the past and present to play with the overall complexities and contradictions of human behaviour. I suppose a more effective way of referring to the archetype in my work would be that I deal with opposites, polarities, and extremes.
SP: Lately, various esteemed artworks have become a site of deconstruction in the name of climate activism. In one of your artworks titled Carvaggio, We Sat Outside a Dairy Queen, Anything it could wet, and more – we saw a tear on the canvas. Would you imagine “destruction” to be a common theme for the future of contemporary art?
MD: The tears I paint represent loss and destruction. It could be loss or destruction of any kind. It is up to the viewer to choose what they want to interpret. After all, art appreciation is a one-on-one spontaneous collaboration between a viewer and an artwork.
SP: How has the pandemic influenced your creative practice? How is it visually discernible from your pre-pandemic oeuvre?
MD: During the pandemic I painted a series of images based almost entirely on the manner in which we shifted and almost entirely towards online communication and entertainment. My paintings were an exploration of how the lockdown reduced much of the world to consuming images through screens, reading comments on posts, receiving and sending messages, texts, etc. I was fascinated by it to be honest. I continue to think about the social media circus, and how it has affected our means of communication. I’m interested in how messaging and commenting are literally at our fingertips all day long, and people share a wide range of emotions and thoughts – sometimes with regret. I read comments on posts and videos and like many of us; I was intrigued, entertained, dismayed, and sometimes sickened by the fact that as humans we all are related. As an artist, I’m quite interested in this seemingly never ending massive social experiment.
SP: Your work, The joy of painting, appears to be a mood board with glimpses of artworks from the most notable modern, contemporary, and pop artists. What are your thoughts on inspiration from other artists? On the same note, how would you advise emerging artists to take inspiration from their predecessors?
MD: I was a college professor for fourteen years and I always reminded my students to learn to sketch and draw and to take what they can from the Old Masters as well as any and all historical art, including from any culture that inspires them. I’m personally inspired by diverse cultures and strive to incorporate those influences into my work. As artists we must strive to understand our place in the lineage of art.
SP: In artworks such as Holier than thou, Where the sun hits the water, Richter’s Cat, Allegory of admiration, Memento Mori, The Woods in the Back of my House, and many more, we can observe the Droste Effect. What has been your intent for employing such an optical illusion?
MD: When I was a student in art school I was very much interested in the paintings of Magritte and the way he created optical illusions. I was also interested in artists throughout history who employed the trompe-l’œil effect. I take pride in being a contemporary artist who strives to feed that historical narrative.
SP: We have found your works replete with Hyperrealistic forms fused with Surrealistic elements- would you like to elaborate on how these movements have influenced or inspired your practice?
MD: I appreciate Max Ernst although I’ve never considered myself interested in Surrealism, the influence of dreams or the subconscious as a motivator for creative output, but I understand how others might see that as a means of inspiration. I’m actually quite the realist…or as you say – hyperrealist!
Image Courtesy: Marc Dennis
Art Research: Asmita Singh
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