2021
Signed, verso
Oil on panel
24 x 18 inches
$6,500
This painting is from a body of work titled “The Pursuit of Love” in reference to both formal and conceptual qualities of Jean Honoré Fragonard’s florid “Progress of Love” paintings. Inspired by the 18th-century Rococo paintings of lovers in nature, Raenbeau aims to pay tribute to the celebration and pursuit of love while reframing love and sex as nature itself.
In Raenbeau’s oil painting, he is figuratively reframing himself in the context of art history (as it was only straight male/female relationships depicted by Fragonard and other Rococo artists) and also quite literally framing himself and his partner with art historical imagery. Fragonard’s “Blind Man’s Bluff” from 1750 frames the artist and his lover, but is painted over with a new lens on loving relationships in 2021.
Work by JD Raenbeau