File:Robert Bordo Rear-view 2011.jpg

Painting by Robert Bordo, Rear-view (oil on canvas, 24" x 36", 2011). The image illustrates a key later body of work in Robert Bordo's career in the 2010s, when he produced his windshield and rear-view mirror paintings, which featured a blunter presence reflecting anxiety over issues such as political polarization and climate change. This works conflating the picture plane with the windscreens of cars, using them (and rear-view mirrors, weather conditions, and active wipers) as metaphors for consciousness, movement in space and time (forward and backward), regret and apprehension. Critics noted works such as this one for their complex sense of spaces fractured by broken center lines splits and doublings and thick wet-on-wet paint handling. This work was publicly shown in prominent exhibitions, discussed in major art journals and daily press publications and acquired by a major museum.

Artist Robert Bordo. Copyright held by the artist.

Robert Bordo

Entire artwork

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a key later body of work in Robert Bordo's career in the 2000s: his windshield and rear-view mirror paintings. Critics wrote that this work left behind the delicate, lyrical touch of his landscape works for a blunter, more implacable presence that likened to Philip Guston, which displayed a sense of anxiety reflecting issues such as political polarization and climate change. This larger work was more explicitly structured by its imagery (car windshields and rear-view mirrors), which served as metaphors for consciousness and movement in space and time, forward and backward. They maintained Bordo's interests in flatness and depth, conflating the picture plane with the windscreens of cars (often driving through unpredictable, rainy weather with active wipers) and typically employed a complex sense of space, with overlaps, splits, doublings, changes of scale, and expressive horizontal and vertical lines suggesting journeys. Because the article is about an artist and his work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this key stage and body of work, which brought Bordo ongoing recognition through exhibitions and coverage by major critics and publications. Bordo's work of this type and this series is discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Robert Bordo, and the work no longer is viewable, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.