Christina Ramberg was born in the post WW-II boom of 1940’sAmerica and died in the middle of the Clinton era post-capitalist acceleration of the 1990s. That is to say, her life was that of America’s rise to its own version of “exceptionalism,” full of flaws, conflict, social change, social awareness, economic warfare on the poor, wars fought across the world, pop-cultural and youth culture booms, and the onset of the Internet. She lived in the heart of an incredible complicated era, one that we are still dissecting and understanding in our own 21st century battles with a particular demise in world order, a revival of protest and social change, fascism, pandemics and new wars.
All of this feels essential when looking at the works of Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective, on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and organized by the Art Institute of Chicago. The fetish objects, the hands, hair, shoes, all without a face or eyes to look back at you, has an anonymous feel, with over 100 works (paintings, sketches, ideas, quilts) all giving the impression of something alluring and yet unattainable. At the height of consumerism in America, she is questioning it, opening it to critique, reimagining our desire as something to be sold and for us to be sold to. She was ahead of her time because she was creating something entirely new in a new world being made around her. That she used the graphic language of comics, something quite universal, only enhances the pop communication she was working against. She blurred the lines and made the lines. A must-see for those on the west coast. —Evan Pricco
