Self-Portrait with the Combat Nymphos of Saigon

Provenance:
Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

Exhibitions:
Kelowna Art Gallery, Chris Cran - Surveying the Damage 1977 - 1997, September 5 - October 18, 1998

Literature:
Roald Nasgaard and Nancy Tousley, Chris Cran - Surveying the Damage 1977 - 1997, Kelowna Art Gallery, 1998, reproduced page 18 and on the cover, listed page 56
Notes:
This painting is from Chris Cran's first important body of work, commonly called the Self Portraits, produced from 1984 to 1989. Cran explores the tension in the dialectic between mass culture and high art. These paintings are also a response to and critique of the development of the art world art stars of the 1980s and their blatant careerism. In this painting, Cran reproduces an illustration from an early 1960s mens' magazine of bare-breasted combat nymphos shooting up a village in Vietnam. Cran, with his art star hat, enters the fray with his impotent wooden gun. He paints himself in oil, whereas the illustrative section is painted in a dry acrylic paint, emulating the qualities of the cheap pulp magazine. Cran made only a dozen of this kind of self portrait, and this is certainly the most notorious of the group. Most of these self portraits are in public collections - only a few remain in private collections.