Donald Gerrard Doe

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Donald Gerrard Doe was born in Toledo, Ohio. He went to the Cleveland Institute of Art for his undergraduate degree. Afterwards he got his Masters in Fine Arts in Sculpture from Yale University School of Art.

He received an MFA in sculpture at Yale school of art. He worked with Professors such as William H. Bailey, Erwin Hauer, Vito Acconci, and Gabor Peterdi. Some of his peers included artists, Lisa Yuskavage, Richard Philips, Sean Landers, and John Currin. After his time in Yale, Donald Doe moved to Boston for two years. Here he practiced his artistic styles, starting to work on some of the concepts he interacts with currently. To further his abilities to work with sculpture he worked as an Assistant Process Engineer at Tallix Art Foundry in Beacon, New York. He worked here for two and a half years, and met his future wife, Cecilia Whitaker here. They both used the factory to produce their own personal art while working for the foundry. After his time in Beacon, Doe wanted to move into New York’s rich artistic culture. This was made possible by a grant received from Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 1991. At this point Doe wanted to change his artistic medium from sculpture to painting. Since the late '80s he has lived in Brooklyn with his wife and three children. He has worked as an illustrator for The New Yorker among other journals. He has also held art professor positions teaching sculpture, 3d design, and rendering at St. John's University and the New York School of Interior Design.

Particular pieces of his work are owned by the Museum of Modern Art , The Chicago Institute of Art, Cornell University, among others.

Early Work

His paintings began as ink brush drawings with a focus on an artist and the visual embodiment of his personal, emotional, and physical difficulties. Examples include the artist's muse, dealer, studio assistance, and an over abundance of canvases. This series of watercolors focuses on male figures that are dominated by the struggles of their artistic careers. Here the watercolors are showing the actual production of art, giving an almost ironic image to the idealized everyday life of the artist. He would then places these paintings alongside portraits of an unknown man as he watches a flood absorb, and ultimately destroy, a landscape he had just moments before rendered on canvas. There is a collection of these works in the Deutsche Bank New York City, as well as the Piergoi Flat Files in Brooklyn. Alongside Doe’s collection are a number of other artists represented by the Deutsche Bank New York that share his artistic strategies. These artists included, but are not limited to, Nina Bovasso, Tom Burckhardt, Ken Butler, Marc Dean Veca, Tim Maul, and Charles Spurrier.

Doe’s work evolved from these watercolors into larger oil paintings themed around altercations on pin-up photos. The use of pin-ups matures greatly throughout his later work as well. While his later works focused on portraits of female figures, these ones have a mix of male and female figures. In an interview by Pierogi, Donald Doe states his thoughts on these paintings, “I have another series of a solitary male utilizing a camera possibly as a voyeuristic device preparing to either document his female subject or keep a distance from her, a very open ended series without an outcome, but full of noir. I am working on two other series about pissing in public and another about gun hobbyists in the woods. So I guess the men illustrate a problematizing of the male gaze, and other blurred distinctions between life and the authoritative nudes of the masters, that an eventual instillation will resolve.”

In an article published by Deutsche Bank there is an exploration on Doe’s variety of work. “Doe is concerned in maintaining a balance in which humorous commentary and the artistically self-referential, narcissism and melancholy are not locked into competition with one another, but remain in a state of suspension.” This state of suspension is an essential aspect to Don Doe’s work. The paintings are not meant to be entirely humorous, which is why they are placed comfortably alongside the narcissistic and melancholy themes of the work.

This juxtaposition can be seen in the titles of the paintings themselves. Many of the oil paintings carry titles that link to ancient mythology such as “Echo and Narcissus” and “Leda and the Swan”. This makes the paintings even more problematic, placing them within a historical and mythical narrative while having a modernized image. In 2003 there was a group show that Don Doe took part in, and was reviewed by the New York Times by Ken Johnson. Heterosexual male desire was not the most accepted theme for art during this time. Artists such as John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, and Donald Doe have brought such themes into the artistic conversation with the problematic way they represent such desire. In this review, Ken Johnson, briefly explores the way Doe’s work interacts with mythology and male desire:

“With loaded brushes on medium-size canvases, Mr. Doe paints heated close-ups of beautiful nude or partly exposed women. Lurking in the background of each is a man--or, in one case, a woman--with a camera. Each picture updates an ancient myth: the Expulsion, Leda and the Swan, Echo and Narcissus. But what is most immediately at stake is the connection between a psychology of voyeurism, exhibitionism and shame on the one hand, and the urgent sensuality of painting on the other. For all its material generosity, however, a certain stiff and laborious quality in his painting undermines the effect.”

Pirate Girls

Doe's later works also worked around a similar balance between the sensual and critique, but had a different visual theme. This new theme focused on female pirates in sensual poses, typically mimicking pin-ups. Doe created a work based on Moby Dick, but in his version of the epic he portrayed Ishmael as a pinup girl building a ship in a bottle much like he builds his own coffin. These oil paintings and watercolors portray pirate women, typically nude or scantly dressed, along with images of ships, either within bottles or upon the sea. While there is not a male figure within the images, the male gaze is still apparent; reflected onto the viewer. These images still mimic a humorous and sensual view of pin-up illustrations, while also questioning social norms and stereotypes. Don Doe uses poses and images from Jean-Honore Fragonard’s work, comic strips, history books, pornography, and illustration genres to create an alternate world where “women are dominatrix ‘pirate gals’ and men are as ships in a bottle. These phallically potent ‘Pirate Gals’ celebrate pinup representations and wear their sexuality as an identity.”

These thoughts were explored in a book, Dangerous Waters by Andrea Inselmann. Dangerous Waters was published alongside Doe’s group show at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University where fellow artists Dylan Graham and Sally Smart were shown. The show had a strong theme of pirates, ships, and the vast ocean, which each of these artists demonstrates in their own way. The book shows images of the pieces displayed, as well as a group of articles that illustrates the forces at play within these artist’s works. Within this text, Inselmann is able to bring to light some of the essential points Doe’s work is making. “Blowing wide open boundaries that have been established for the sake of gender identification along gender lines," writes Inselmann, "Doe’s images encourage us to consider recent theories of spectatorship that propose more fluid processes across gender lines.” By the sexualized view of the woman as pirate the paintings break gender norms, as well as established social gender lines. The nudity and powerful status of the woman figure within the paintings makes them difficult to fully comprehend due to their association with pin-ups as well as feminist empowerment.

These ideas are explored more within the text as well as his description on the Morgan-Lehman Gallery. The choice of featuring the woman figure within the mythos of the pirate is highly explicit and intentional. These ‘pirate gals’ play out a fantastical sexual identity of freedom and power. To Doe, pirates represent freedom and empowering impulses. These traits have helped build the pirate as a pervasion icon within our culture. Doe plays on the multifaceted aspect of the pirate. Inselmann picks up on this, stating that:

“The choice of creating images of women pirates is crucial to Doe’s project for its symbolic quality. ‘As a murderer, a thief, a colorful hero of adventure stories, an enemy of the state, a symbol of resistance to capitalist systems and personification of its worst imperatives, the pirate is an ambivalent and deeply fractured symbol’ noted critic recently…This split within the image of the pirate itself is reflected in Doe’s work, which- at once sexist and feminist, real and surreal, unsettling and seductive- has a critical depth which is initially obscured by its pop qualities and direct emotive punch.”

The paintings are able to mold and alter the symbolic quality of the pirate, questioning some of the ideals and assumptions the iconic image holds. This is than framed in an image that is provocative and drenched in styles of a gendered past. It remains seductive, while employing a sense of freedom and surreal empowerment. In "Bodies Unbound, the Classical and Grotesque", a book published by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in 2012, an article explores Doe's work along side Martha Rosler. The article states that "The Doe and Rosler images present confrontational and oversized female bottoms that sexualize the female form and engender discomfort in the viewer."

==Awards==

• Ellen Bachtell Stocktell Fellowship, Norfolk, Ct (1980)
• Yale Honorary Scholarships (1985-87)
• Nancy Graves Traveling fellowship in Sculpture Yale School of Art (1987)
• Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1991)
• Ludwig Vogelstien Foundation Grant (1992)

External Links

• MOMA Website retrieved October 29, 2014
• Art Institute of Chicago retrieved December 5, 2014
• Cornell University, Johnson Museum of Art, "Dangerous Waters: Three Solo Shows" retrieved December 5, 2014
• Cornell University, Johnson Museum of Art, "Map Maker" retrieved December 5, 2014