The cropped, central figure in The Red Pants, 2016, is emblematic of the unique visual language of Louise Bonnet's surreal, distended universe. Featured in the artist’s first solo show at Nino Mier Gallery in Los Angeles in 2016, the intentionally claustrophobic composition centers on the pelvis of a figure whose long, drooping nose swings into view like a fleshy necktie. Sausage-like fingers hold buttercups, pulled together loosely with twined white string, one of the artist’s long-standing motifs. The Red Pants brings together the artist’s signature combination of bodily distortion and a sense of unease.

 

Bonnet’s treatment of the body—particularly her bulbous noses—caused sensation in Los Angeles, where she lived, worked, and exhibited, in the mid-2010s.ⁱ The artist addresses the phallic likeness of her noses head-on: “The figures make some people uncomfortable maybe because the noses look like penises, but I don’t start out thinking I’m going to paint penises. I just like when things go in and out of something.”ⁱⁱ Indeed, The Red Pants, and her oeuvre at large, traverses a wide range of graphic references, from Surrealists like René Magritte, to the late work of Philip Guston; the underground cartoons of R. Crumb, and even medieval European devotional art.

 

The hands holding buttercups function as a fig-leaf to the exposed nose above, recalling medieval Christian floral symbolism. The picked flowers and color palette of The Red Pants are reminiscent of the aesthetics of medieval books of hours, particularly those from the Flemish and Netherlandish schools, c. 1500, which featured illustrations of flowers as life-like as those found in contemporary herbals.

 

More widely, in medieval European art, Christian saints are painted holding attributes, such as flowers, that symbolize the plot of a story from the saint’s life.ⁱⁱⁱ St. Elizabeth of Hungary’s cloak full of roses, for example, reminds the viewer of when the saint miraculously turned bread into roses. Bonnet likes this aspect of medieval European art, explaining how painting from this time is “really in the service of an idea, and it’s trying to tell a story,” just like her own work.^iv In The Red Pants, for instance, the viewer is keenly aware that the content on the canvas is only part of the scene. The drooping nose belongs to some invisible face; the buttercups were picked elsewhere. “I like the idea of viewing the paintings like they’re in the middle of a movie, almost like a still,” Bonnet says. “There’s a story before and after what you’re seeing, but it’s not given away.”^v

 

Beyond art historical referents, the artist cites the influence of a fevered hallucination from her childhood, called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, on her work: “it’s a kind of hallucination where you feel your limbs growing, it feels like they’re becoming these gigantic balloons,” she explains.^vi Oil paint proved the perfect medium to illustrate this dysmorphic experience to the viewer; the palms and fingers of the figure in The Red Pants seem to be growing, as Bonnet’s subtle treatment of oil paint lends a glowing, expanding sheen to the edges of the figure.

 

Sensations of anxiety, loneliness, and the generally awkward experience of existing in a human body, play out, too.^vii Bonnet’s highly finished surfaces, and the long U-curves of pants pocket, nose, and crotch, give the work a slickness that’s almost sweaty. “I am interested in the body. In what having a body feels like, or how we try to hide the way it feels… the ornamentation of it…” Bonnet says.^viii But there’s no hiding in The Red Pants; the close, full-frontal composition holds the viewer in its awkwardness, red pants, buttercups, and all.

 

 

Collectors’ Digest

 

• Bonnet's work is represented in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, among others.

• Recent solo and group exhibitions include Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong, Louise Bonnet: Onslaught, 2022, and The Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, 2022.

 

 

ⁱ Michael Slenske, “Louise Bonnet is on the Nose,” Cultured, Apr. 19, 2016, online.

ⁱⁱ Louise Bonnet, quoted ibid.

ⁱⁱⁱ Sharon Mizota, “Full-frontal absurdity: The world of Louise Bonnet’s fleshy, surreal portraits,” The Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2016, online.

^iv Bonnet, quoted in Pac Pobric, “’I Don’t Mind Being Repulsive’: Swiss Painter Louise Bonnet on the Lure of Ugliness and How Horror Films Inspire Her Work,” artnet, Oct. 29, 2020, online.

^v Bonnet, quoted in “Louise Bonnet and Dodie Bellamy,” Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2022, online.

^vi Bonnet, quoted in “Louise Bonnet and Dodie Bellamy.”

^vii Mizota.

^viii Bonnet, quoted in Daniel Milroy Maher, “Louise Bonnet paints exaggerated bodies as symbols of melancholy and loneliness,” It’s Nice That, Apr. 23, 2019, online.