Robert Olsen, No Title, 2007
In March, 2015's Art Review, I review the work of Robert Olsen at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State Los Angeles. Olsen died in 2014 at the early age of 44, and the Luckman show was the first opportunity to see an ample selection of Olsen's work. Unfortunately, the show was a retrospective. A link to my review can be found here:
In the review, I write this, which contains an unfortunate error:
"In the feverish landscape of contemporary art, Olsen
could hide in plain sight, mounting a show each year, and never receiving much
acclaim. In an artworld that measures value by the metre, his paintings were
contained within a matter of centimetres and needed no more to make an impact.
It is a pity Olsen is not better known."
It is true that Olsen should be better known in the wider artworld. It is also true that Olsen never received any institutional validation from museums or from their endless parade of biennials and surveys. However, it is not true that Olsen never received much acclaim. Actually, the paintings of Olsen were loved by the critical community of Los Angeles and beyond.
Christopher Knight named Olsen one of his top painters under the age of 45, writing that his "pictures have the specificity and presence of portraiture, resonating with the bleak beauty of American life today."
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/02/entertainment/ca-undeadside2
Just two years earlier, Knight wrote an extended review of Olsen, praising how Olsen continued to develop his painting: "When a young artist hits his stride, it's always bracing to watch as he pushes against the boundaries established in his earlier work. "
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/22/entertainment/et-galleries22
Tyler Green, Kriston Capps, Brian Sholis, Doug Harvey, Ken Johnson, and David Pagel all weighed in on Olsen. In other words, Olsen received plenty of acclaim from critics.
In this case, it is pleasant to be wrong. I can only hope that the rest of my assessment proves wrong as well. I hope that museums start paying attention to Olsen and bring his paintings into their collections. It is sad that Olsen died so young, but it is not too late for his quiet, powerful works. We are lucky to have them.
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