Skillfully detailed paintings and drawings by Victoria Gitman immediately draw one in. She has for years been making images of lacy pocketbooks, handbags that connote beauty and luxury, but of a decidedly, even jarringly historical character. Preoccupied with this concept she also paints and draws images of putti and women fresh from 19th-century Europe. She states that she "is attracted to vintage purses and jewelry because they are artifacts laden with personal history, social significance and aesthetic values." The juxtaposition of the figurative and the decorative are presented as two aspects of the same ideal. Gitman explores the idea of woman and object as things of archaic beauty, and ghostly seen in this way in the present.
Published courtesy of ArtScene 2009
