This spring, I bought three catalogs of exhibitions of June Wayne tapestries and whatnot. Yesterday, I flipped through them, but I cannot bring myself to count them as books in my annual list. They’re like 35 pages each with a couple images in each book as well as little bits of film strip or negative with other, presumably full color representation of the work.
At any rate, June Wayne was a painter and lithographer know for her tapestries and textures. These three books show a limited range of subject matter, though. The books all show series of prints and paintings based on her fingerprint, an abstract of DNA, and Japanese/Oriental-influenced images of tidal waves.
Perhaps these books only represent a phase of her art, but a lot of her pieces from this time simply repeat with differences the same motifs. Which is kind of dull.
The text within the books, at least the text that is not French but could very well include the French text as far as I know, lauds Wayne as a very important artist. You know, back when I was reviewing art and poetry in print, I tried to say something nice about everything I reviewed. However, I never got to the point of overemphasizing the importance of an artist in the canon. Perhaps I’m just suffering from the recent monographs from minor artists whose work the public has forgotten if it ever knew them.
So worth a glance, but I wouldn’t pay top dollar to hang her stuff in my house. And I don’t feel the need to go see one of her shows.
