Nicole Eisenman (B. 1965)

Despite wearily bumbling our way through the millenia, the human race has never succeeded in getting over the brute fact that, despite our protestations, we’re never going to get a moment’s peace, and – if you believe in the afterlife – then death’s no picnic either. To make art about all of this is risky – too many artists have tried and failed, their efforts defeated by the clichés that intense feelings of futility, elation or injustice tend to spawn… Eisenman is an artist who welcomes ghosts with open arms. In one interview she declared that: ‘The over abundance of disposable and meaningless images gives oil painting more value. It’s shocking to go to a museum now and be reminded of the power a painting can have after surfing the Internet all day [… ] It’s the realization that you’re not just looking at a painting, say, by Van Gogh, but that one can actually commune with his spirit, just by looking, and time collapses’ (N. Eisenman, quoted in, J. Higgie, ‘In Your Head’, in frieze, reproduced at http:/www.frieze.com/issue/ print_article/in-your-head/).