There is something about the small image of death as a sickle-swinging skeleton strikes on a Norwegian rat who shoots a yellow plume over the city of Naples that comically, moving and perfectly catches the way in which a pandemic can lay waste to a place. Alexis Rockman’s “Pest in the Kingdom of Naples, 1656-1658” (2024) manifests the personification of death and its rodent in a realistic way, while the city of Naples is reduced to abstractions such as drops, blobs and hastily painted buildings, conveys how the Bullying that estimated 1.25 million people killed, including half of the city, left chaos.
That gestures Urbanscape may feel familiar with those of us who are sheltered in cities that have been destroyed by our recent pandemic. Our memories of those apparently endless days of fear and death, just a few years ago, can be blurry, even abstract, and we can actively push them away. That could explain why we are stuck with the repetition of a Trump presidency, because people have actively forgotten the coronavirus under the guidance of an anti-science Zealot.
The clear art -historical reference in this exhibition, entitled Naples: Course or EmpireIs Thomas Cole’s The course of the empire (1833–36) Cycle, which hangs on the New York Historical (formerly New York Historical Society). Rockman’s tribute adds two more seasons, ranging in the series of Eras Cole that has never been tried, including the Trias era of 2 million years ago to a post-human world, bringing the full sweeping of paintings to seven.
While Cole’s paintings are built in proportions that reflect the gold ratio, with the appropriate exception of “The Cummature of Empire”, because it patches up the world, Rockman, Rockman prefers a more cinematic panel. The scale of his paintings is very close, but not exactly the aspect ratio of 2.39: 1 seen as ideal for recent cinema, which changes them into large screens while the supremation of the pixel is challenged by showing us what paint can do.
This is an ambitious series, and by choosing Naples, a great city that never completely regains its status as a world capital, the artist also reminds us that time is long, while our memories and power rule are not. Indeed, each of these paintings suggests that the larger plague is us, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, as seen in “Post Human: Palazzo Donn’anna” (2024), will only arrive if we disappear. That dystopic tone seems to be appropriate when we look ahead – we may start to realize that this version of humanity does not deserve to be renewed for a different season.
Alexis Rockman’s Naples: Course or Empire will continue until 1 March in Magenta Plains (149 Canal Street, Chinatown, Manhattan).
