Walter Robinson

Walter Robinson began painting in New York during the late 70’s, where he was associated with the Picture Generation and soon became a key figure on the local scene. He is also highly popular for his work as an editor and critic: he was the publisher of Art-Rite and then co-founded the Artnet magazine. As a critic, he originated in 2014 the term “zombie formalism” that fuelled many debates.

A pioneer of the Picture Generation, Robinson painted nurses before Richard Prince and spin paintings before Damien Hirst.

His work is almost exclusively figurative and consisting of appropriation of commercial images. One finds advertisements for Target, Land’s End, and other cheap fashion catalogues (The Normcore Series), images of romance novel covers (Romance Series), and also pictures of food and pharmaceutical products (Still Lifes).

Most of the images he diverts are ranging from materialistic desires represented by common consumer items (such as clothes, food, pharmaceutical products, banknotes), to very idealistic and paradigmatic desires found in advertising clichés displaying the playful happiness of the multicultural Western ideal.

Robinson’s tone, for instance when he speaks of consumerism as a perfect world, always seems ironic but never cynical.