Ironically, Joe Fig‘s interest in painting led to his being, if anything, better known for his sculptures. In conjunction with interviewing various painters for his 2009 book Inside the Painter’s Studio, he made well-received dioramalike models of their studios, which were exhibited along with audio of the interviews. Fig, who holds a BFA and an MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts, returned to painting in this recent show of eight canvases from 2010 and ’11. Inspired by Ross King’s 2006 book The Judgment of Paris: Manet, Meissonier and an Artistic Revolution, Fig painted historical or imagined scenes from those two artists’ lives, maintaining a focus on their studios. His interviews with contemporary artists stressed the sustainability of an artistic profession, so he was drawn to King’s study of painters with opposite career arcs: Meissonier, now obscure though flourishing in the 1860s, and the then-upstart Manet.
The paintings are narrative and anecdotal, but not merely so. Fig’s identification with the artists comes across in works at once amusing and respectful. In Study for the Campaign of France, Fig depicts the self-serious Meissonier modeling himself as the Emperor Napoleon, alfresco on a winter day, astride a wooden horse, painting himself from a mirror. The tenderness implicit in the work was underscored when Fig told me that to make the painting he bought the costume and assembled the same scenario in his own yard.
