Peter Davies

Fun With the Animals: Joseph Beuys Text Painting
1998
acrylic on canvas
396.2 x 243.8

In a giant incomprehensible flow chart (a form borrowed from Beuys’s blackboard works), he maps out the ‘six degrees of separation’ of his art heroes, linking them impossibly to each other, and inevitably back to Beuys. It requires the complicated linear thinking of a late-night drinking game, but Davies proves it’s only twelve easy jumps from Picasso to Sarah Lucas (if Peter Doig and Matthew Barney’s love of sport can be counted as an actual link). Peter Davies presents an art history on a functional level: it’s about as close to science as it gets.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/peter_davies.htm

The fun one hundred, 2001
29 Color Serigraph, 58 x 84 cm.
Edition (250). Signed

Peter Davies' colourful lists inspired by conceptualism's dry text works rank modern and contemporary artists according to his opinions, these text based paintings explore the role of the artist in defining popular culture while combining certain art historical and contemporary art notions with everyday life or culture. The intentionally anti-aesthetic lists take something which is understood, accepted or acknowledged and while adhering to those givens, something from the contemporary world is thrown in to skew it. 

Davies' text works seem far removed from the the traditional notion of how conceptual, text based art should appear.  His wordy arrangements arrangements explain how things stand in a particular system without recourse to a traditional forms of representation.  As works of art they are homorously reflexive, dwelling upon the artistic context that they are part of.

As in The Fun One Hundred Davies says "The text paintings offer a playful and humorous take on my attempt to understand art history and contemporary art". Davies' lists offers explanations as to why these artists are 'fun', such as 'David Hockney - Pool Attendant' and 'Vanessa Beecroft - Hanging Out'.(via http://www.opus-art.com/artists/PeterDavies)