Doug Meyer: Gentleman's Pictures

Gentleman's Pictures

Doug Meyer's new large-scale paintings continue his career long exploration of the properties of abstraction and representation. The new works use ads offering massage and sexual services as their source material with the images then undergoing a transformation using digital and traditional media. The source material lies in pornography but the final paintings achieve a unique fusion of modernist expressionism and pop detachment. Meyer's title "Gentlemen's Pictures" is an art historical term that refers to paintings that feature female nudes in poses derived from traditional art that were usually installed in smoking rooms, studies, or other rooms frequented primarily by men. Meyer's work also looks to other sources for his imagery but instead of the realm of high art he prefers to find his source material in the every day images found in the back pages of weekly newspapers.