Material World: Evocative Interiors Reveal Social Ironies

A professor at the University of New Orleans since 1975, artist Jim Richard produces paintings that are in the tradition of rendering domestic interiors. He articulates a wry social controversy through cartoon-like scenes. “I take things out of context in the rooms, such as decorative objects and patterns and swatches, and I put them back together in a kind of emblematic arrangement,” Richard said of his new works in a recent interview from his home.

Richard’s remarkable handling of paint often makes the surface flat and somewhat surreal. He plays off reality but he also deals in fiction. The New Orleans artist creates his own universe that is instantly recognizable with a wild imagination juxtaposed with a sense of order and playful social parodies. The paintings reflect our image saturated, material world through the use of pattern. Moreover, Richard often heightens the anxiety associated to spaces. He lends a pop sensibility to the canvas, and keeps the viewer’s eye wandering and seeking a message in the intriguing scene.

In Richard’s paintings, things play off and oppose each other. His works reveal interior design elements such as furniture and light fixtures that lose their objective as parts of reality. Rather, they imbue the artist’s wit and tendency toward French surrealism. The majority of his paintings portray high style period rooms with social ironies, and they are always without people. The position of the viewer implies a human presence, although there is none.

“I intentionally don’t have figures in my paintings because we would get caught up in what they were wearing and so forth. It’s more about how they live,” Richard explains. “Sometimes, the rooms are so claustrophobic. They are as discomforting as they are comfortable.”

Indeed, Richard’s paintings do not exactly invite you inside. “There are too many obstacles,” he says. “I didn’t want to be a reporter. I wanted the rooms to have an added dimension. By mixing the textures and patterns I kept it from being purely harmonious.”

When Richard was a young artist, he was intrigued with living spaces. “Wherever I started, it seems that I always ended up with things that had to do with Americana. It was usually interiors, the spaces we grew up in, that were the most revealing.”

During hurricane Katrina, Richard’s Gentilly studio took nine feet of water and he subsequently lost 40 years of work, moving temporarily to Austin. After finding another studio and returning to New Orleans, Richard continued his interior collages as well as embarking on a new direction.

Currently, Richard’s work includes paintings that he categorizes as emblems. They detail artwork, pattern, and decorative objects that are taken out of the context of the interior décor and reassembled in an emblematic presentation. In some paintings, such as Over the Dunes, 2008, a framed painting hovers in mid-air over a landscape.

“It allows me to work more abstractly,” he says. “It is a result of my doing a lot of cut and paste collages. The emblems allow me the chance to not concern myself with perspective. I can let things go their own way. It is all about putting things high and low.” Freely mixing styles and aesthetics, Richard blends the high with the low, and the pretentious with the sincere. His beautiful yet disturbing settings instantly draw the viewer into interpreting these witty panoramas. “After all, all good art has to have some kind of edge,” Richard exclaims. ✦