Philip Taaffe

Philip Taaffe's visually exuberant, intricate work celebrates man's ritualistic impulses toward image making, borrowing widely from world culture motifs like Northwest Coast Indian masks, Islamic ornamentation, and Japanese perforated screens. Known for its elaborate sampling of methods (a single work may use collage, monotype, relief printing, marbling, gilding, silk-screening, and the gestures of Action painting), Taaffe's art is founded on his belief that painting should be a synthesis of visual forces rather than the ruptures sought by modernism. References include Op Art, abstract artists Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg, the 1970s Pattern and Decoration movement, and 1980s appropriation art.