Emerald Waters (New Beverly)

Name/Title

Emerald Waters (New Beverly)

Entry/Object ID

2016.162

Description

Alternating rows of a desert scene (palms, cacti, and mountains) seperated by patches of pastel yellow and pink.

Artwork Details

Medium

oil acrylic on canvas

Acquisition

Notes

Collection of DePaul Art Museum, gift of Northern Trust Purchase and Dia Weil

Made/Created

Artist

Raitt, Neil

Date made

2016

Ethnography

Notes

Europe United Kingdon England

Inscription/Signature/Marks

Location

TL of V

Transcription

[artist signature] 2016

Notes

Inscription Type: black ink

Lexicon

Getty AAT

Concept

kitsch, landscapes (representations), visual works (works), Minimal

Hierarchy Name

Associated Concepts (hierarchy name), Visual Works (hierarchy name), Visual and Verbal Communication (hierarchy name), Styles and Periods (hierarchy name)

Facet

Associated Concepts Facet, Objects Facet, Styles and Periods Facet

Dimensions

Dimension Description

overall

Width

47-3/16 in

Length

70-7/8 in

Exhibition

DPAM Collects: Happy Little Trees and Other Recent Acquisitions

Interpretative Labels

Label Type

Cultural/Historical Context

Label

Neil Raitt (British, b. 1986) Emerald Waters (New Beverly), 2016 Oil on canvas Collection of DePaul Art Museum, restricted gift of Northern Trust Purchase Prize and Dia Weil 2016.162 Popular television painter Bob Ross is partially to thank for the familiarity of the techniques and kitschy-auras found in Neil Raitt’s compositions of happy little trees and mountain-scapes. Formally trained at the Royal College of Art, Raitt credits Richard Prince, Minimalism, and t.v. viewers’ favorite 80s artist with influencing his work. Often using Bob Ross’s commercial line of paints, Raitt transforms the Ross’s version of landscape painting by systematically repeating an image by hand over the entire canvas. Of this laborious technique, Raitt says, “the more the artist copies or the viewer looks at the same motif, the more it loses its meaning.” This hand-made repetition, familiar to Ross (who made three versions of the same painting during each filming) raises questions about the hierarchies of “high” versus “low” art. What is our rubric for fitting a work into one category or the other, and can these labels really exist independently of one another?