The Insiders, Mikel Glass
The Insiders was inspired by the social dynamic of my then ten-year-old daughter’s life. She was part of a pack of “friends” that she didn’t like…
The three dolls with the blonde hair and the pretty dresses playing with their dolls on a satin cloth under the spotlight represent the braintrust of the clique. The four others, nude or in shabby undergarments, are relegated to the perimeter, visible in the dim light overflow. The “Insiders” are depicted in a tension-wrought moment. The nearest figure has broken her doll, and the queen bee in the red dress looks at her sternly. The four outsiders are excluded from the action. They appear forlorn and wistful, though one may one be plotting to encourage the others to take action to jump into the spotlight.
The composition contains a parallel narrative germane to my own artistic formation - Modernism’s supplanting of Realism in the spotlight of art history. The vintage television set and picture frame provide a clue. Imagine the green plane was tipped down from the picture plane itself (a state in accordance with the principles of Clement Greenberg.) The girls in their 1950’s dresses now become the darlings of the art world. The nude and tunic-clad dolls relegated to the earth-toned perimeter now representing the classicism that Modernism aimed to permanently supplant.
But if the Greenberg-ian cloth, with all atop it, was yanked away, remaining would be a brown space with a receding grid pattern with nude and tunic-clad figures…essentially a Renaissance composition.