Untitled (Pollock/Titian) #1

Standing in the tradition of institutional critique, Andrea Fraser's work analyzes the functions of both art and art institutions – which are perceived as places of concealed social conflict – from sociological, psychoanalytical, and feminist perspectives. The artist's "Untitled" series of photographs investigates how art history constructs the artist as a transhistorical subject and how that construction is articulated in relation to representations of women, touching issues such as polemics of feminism, historical revisionism, and artistic authenticity.The series stems from a project Fraser completed in 1984, which consisted of a collection of slides superimposing images of modern and Renaissance master paintings and drawings culled from museum libraries and gift shops. Having reconstructed these images as (second generation) poster-size photographs, Fraser's "Untitled" loses the painterly detail of the original masterpieces, transforming the aura of artistic integrity to the mechanized and fetishistic language of media. The resulting works are both dissonant and seductive: Titian's Venus gently dematerializes into one of Jackson Pollock's all-over fields, and traces of De Kooning's violently rendered figure scars the beatific Raphael Madonna. Through her act of appropriation, Fraser explores the exclusive nature artistic lineage, writing herself into the legacy while simultaneously critiquing its historical bias.

– Alicia Reuter