Heroic Doodles
The bouquets in Dutch painting represent a mixture of seasonal varieties that cannot, in reality, coexist. The flowers that make up these impossible bouquets are depicted at the height of their bloom, signifying grandeur alongside imminent decay. Though they epitomize the golden age of Dutch painting, 17th-century flower paintings belong to a genre traditionally placed at the bottom of the hierarchy of painting. In Heroic Doodles, Laufer takes up this subject matter, which to this day is associated with the realm of the domestic and undemanding. Departing from reproductions of masterworks in the genre, she employs a systematic process that, while generating critical distance, results in dynamic, intuitive reworkings of the originals. Following the original composition, a small vase is persistently present at the bottom, barely containing the wild proliferation of flowers. In Laufer’s reinterpretations, the painterly gestures come to signify the possibilities and impossibilities in painting with romanticism and abundance. The repeated tracing of the floral outlines is toyed with technically and metaphorically, to the extent that the once carefully-rendered flowers are now just brush strokes emptied of meaning.
