“Please mister don't touch me tomatoes
Please don't you touch me tomatoes
Touch me yam, pumpkin or potato --
But for goodness sake - don't touch me tomatoes.”
— Sam Manning
Jamian Juliano-Villani was born in 1987 and grew up in Newark, New Jersey. As a daughter of commercial painters, she was immersed in the graphic design of the 1970s and 1980s, an influence which can clearly be traced in her riotous and highly graphic paintings. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including fashion, photography, illustration and art history, Juliano-Villani’s work is nothing short of schizophrenic. Through research and spontaneous discovery, she seeks out images with a ‘subliminal cultural power’, projecting her findings from cartoons and comic books, television stills and personal photographs onto her canvas, building a narrative of disparate layers and esoteric references. What results is a surrealistic kaleidoscope of characters and objects, stemming from the very recesses of her psyche.
Despite the appropriation of imagery from the web, Juliano-Villani emphasises, 'I’m not trying to make post-Internet paintings. What the fuck is post-Internet? It’s life.'i
The artist in her studio
Photo David Williams
Juliano-Villani’s riotous, lurid paintings operate in a language familiar to pop culture, irreverent in tone yet transparent in intention. What Juliano-Villani seeks is not to alienate the viewer, but to communicate a specific agenda in her highly legible, illustrative style - her attempt to dissolve the distinctions between high-brow and low-brow art, taste and class. Indeed, ‘(her) paintings are meant to function like TV, in a way. The viewer is to become passive. Instead of alluding or whispering, like a lot of art does, this is art that tells you what’s up. It kind of does the work for you, like TV does.’ii
George Symonette and his Calypso Sextette, Calypso and Native Bahamian Rhythms, 1955
‘Don’t Touch Mi Tomato’ takes its name from a song written in 1949 by Trinidadian musician Sam Manning, ‘Don't Touch Me Tomato’, which was recorded in 1955 by theBahamian goombay musician George Symonette and his Calypso Sextette and released on the LP Calypso and Native Bahamian Rhythms. He was followed by a number of other singers including Josephine Baker in 1958, Phyllis Dillon, and Empress Angie in 2013 (as ‘Don’t Touch Mi Tomato’). Usually performed in the style of calypso, mento, or rocksteady, the song's suggestive lyrics jar in a post-‘Me Too’ era, with historical and systemic sexual harassment and abuse exposed across the music and arts,sciences, academia and politics.
“Touch me this, touch me that
Touch me everything I got
Touch me plum, me apples too
But here's one thing you just can't do
All you do is feel up, feel up
Ain't you tired of feel up, feel up
All you do is squeeze up, squeeze up
Ain't you tired of squeeze up, squeeze up
Mister, take advice from me
The more you look is the less you'll see
But if you just must have your way
Double the price you'll have to pay”
— Sam Manning
Juliano-Villani’s work portrays an ironic dramatised sexuality, with hyper-saturated, tumescent plants and voluptuous foliage spilling into the viewer’s plane. Her alter ego scampers away from the viewer, clad provocatively in hotpants and sheer pink top whilst clutching a clapperboard - a symbolic change of scene perhaps just announced. The titular tomato reclines naked in a hammock, a parody of sexuality and lampooning of sexual performance that subverts traditional power structures concerning the male gaze.
The song, Don’t Touch Mi Tomato
i Jamian Juliano-Villani as quoted in Jonathan Griffin, ‘Jamian Juliano-Villani’, Jonathan Griffin: Criticism and essays on art and culture, 22 August 2014, online
ii Andrew Russeth, ‘Jamian Juliano-Villani Talks Painting’, ARTnews, 22 August 2014, online
Provenance
Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
New York, Rawson Project, Me, Myself and Jah, 14 September – 20 October 2013 London, Phillips, Gary Card: HYSTERICAL, 18 July - 21 August 2019
Literature
Priscilla Frank, ‘Jamian Juliano-Villani Talks Feminism, Art School And Sake’, The Huffington Post, 17 October 2013, online (illustrated)
signed, titled and dated '"Don't touch mi tomato" Jamian Juliano-Villani 2013' on the overlap acrylic on canvas 86.2 x 91.2 cm. (33 7/8 x 35 7/8 in.) Painted in 2013.