One of the unexpected pastimes of the covid pandemic was the ability to peruse the home décor of television reporters broadcasting from outside the studio. PBS’ Lisa Desjardin, for example, has a nice Joan Brown-like painting of a young woman diver in mid-air: free, in control and supremely confident. Jennie Ottinger’s new show—which opened the week of the Queen’s death and was preceded by several Hollywood films marking the 25th anniversary of Diana’s untimely demise —includes a very similar work depicting the Princess in mid-dive (St Tropez, 1997). Both paintings extol the female body fully in control of itself, released from society’s expectations and restrictions. In Ottinger’s take on Diana’s tragic fate, the admonition to “look before you leap” might be inferred. The show is timely, but its subject may be off-putting to those whose nerves have been rubbed raw by coverage of the Royals. It shouldn’t because this exhibition is a load of fun.
Ottinger has only a secondary interest in celebrity; what she’s truly after is an explication of how women get caught up in male-dominated systems and lose autonomy. With an exhibition titled Bad Luck, Dutch. Your Face is on the Tea Towels: The Princess Series, Ottinger riffs on the idea that Diana realized quickly that her marriage was a Big Mistake, but since the machinery of the state was already engaged, she couldn’t stop it.
The 20 small paintings that comprise the show (all 2022) resemble stills from a movie in which the actor — surrounded by clueless, humorless adults — breaks the fourth wall and indicates with a smirk how bizarre her life has become. Ottinger sympathizes. She paints Diana’s story as a feminist cautionary tale, the saga of a smart young woman beset by isolation amid thoughtless, rigid traditions...
Renny Pritikin
