Slacker art
Slacker art was the name critics gave, from 1991, to a loose group of young New York artists, among them Karen Kilimnik, Sean Landers and Jack Pierson, whose casual, scattered, confessional and deliberately unpolished work answered the slick, expensive art of the 1980s.
The word came from the cinema. Richard Linklater's film Slacker, released in 1991, followed a day among the drifters of Austin, Texas, and the same year the critic Jack Bankowsky borrowed its title for an essay in Artforum about Karen Kilimnik, Jack Pierson and Laurie Parsons. After a decade of Jeff Koons's polished steel and a booming art market, their work looked careless on purpose: Kilimnik's floor installations of photocopies, clothes and drawings, Pierson's One Man's Opinion of Moonlight of 1991, a reconstructed bohemian apartment down to its junk drawer, and Parsons's desktop disorder. Chance, Bankowsky argued, was what held them together.
Other names followed. Rhonda Lieberman's essay The Loser Thing, in Artforum in 1992, spoke of loser art, and Ralph Rugoff's exhibition Just Pathetic, at the Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Los Angeles in 1990, of pathetic art: work that seemed to fail on purpose. Cady Noland, Kilimnik and Sean Landers collected the detritus of personal histories and popular culture. Landers wrote his doubts, boasts and confessions in ballpoint on legal pads, published one as the book [sic] in 1993, and painted them onto canvas; Elizabeth Peyton showed drawings of historical figures in a room at the Chelsea Hotel the same year, and then painted Kurt Cobain; John Currin, Landers's contemporary at Yale, painted girls from a high-school yearbook and then middle-aged women in a knowingly awkward, kitsch manner. The label was rarely welcomed, and Landers has said it never fitted. It named a moment in the early 1990s more than a movement, and most of its artists went on to very different work.
At a glance
- When
- 1990 to the mid-1990s
- Where
- New York
- Leading artists
- Karen Kilimnik, Sean Landers, Jack Pierson, Elizabeth Peyton
Characteristics of slacker art
- Scatter
- Installations of photocopies, clothes, drawings and junk spread loosely across the floor.
- Confession
- The artist's own doubts, crushes and failures, in handwriting, diaries and snapshots.
- Fandom
- Television, film and rock stars, collected, drawn and painted with a fan's devotion.
- Deliberate awkwardness
- Painting and drawing that look amateurish on purpose, after the slick finish of the 1980s.
- Chance
- Arrangements that look accidental, and are meant to.
Slacker artists
Every artist below has a page on this site, with a short biography and what a valuation of their work turns on.
Slacker artists
- Karen KilimnikScatter installations of photocopies, clothes and drawings, then small paintings of celebrities in the manner of the Old Masters.
- Sean LandersWrites his doubts, boasts and confessions across his paintings in his own hand, and paints a lonely clown at sea.
- Jack PiersonSpells out words in mismatched letters salvaged from old signs, and photographs the people around him in casual, intimate moments.
- Elizabeth PeytonSmall, jewel-coloured portraits of rock stars, royalty, friends and historical heroes, painted with a fan's devotion.
- John CurrinPaints women from yearbooks, magazines and the Old Masters with a virtuoso's skill and a satirist's eye.
Famous Slacker works
- The Hellfire Club Episode of the AvengersKaren Kilimnik, 1989
- One Man's Opinion of MoonlightJack Pierson, 1991
- [sic]Sean Landers, 1993
- KurtElizabeth Peyton, 1995
- AloneSean Landers, 1996
What a valuation turns on
Slacker art was made to look cheap, and much of it was: drawings, photocopies, snapshots and installations of found things. Installations rarely come to market whole, and when they do the artist's instructions and the gallery's records are what make them saleable. Paintings and works on paper are what most owners have, and for these artists the work of the early 1990s, bought from the galleries that first showed them, 303 Gallery, Andrea Rosen and Gavin Brown's Enterprise among them, is the work that made their names.
Because the look is deliberately rough, provenance matters more than usual: a drawing on a legal pad or a collage of magazine cuttings is easy to imitate and hard to judge by eye. The original gallery invoice, exhibition labels and any correspondence with the artist's studio settle most questions. Condition needs checking with care, because photocopies, felt-tip, sticky tape and cheap paper discolour and fade.
Common questions
What is slacker art?
Slacker art is the name critics gave in the early 1990s to young New York artists, Karen Kilimnik, Sean Landers, Jack Pierson and Elizabeth Peyton among them, whose casual, scattered, confessional and deliberately unpolished work answered the glossy, expensive art of the 1980s.
Where does the name slacker art come from?
From Richard Linklater's 1991 film Slacker. The critic Jack Bankowsky borrowed its title the same year for an essay in Artforum on Karen Kilimnik, Jack Pierson and Laurie Parsons, and the label stuck.
Who were the slacker artists?
Karen Kilimnik, Jack Pierson, Laurie Parsons and Sean Landers above all, with Elizabeth Peyton, John Currin and Rita Ackermann often named with them. Cady Noland and Mike Kelley are discussed alongside them under the related names of loser and pathetic art.
What is the difference between slacker art and scatter art?
Scatter art describes installations spread loosely across the floor, a format of the late 1980s and early 1990s; slacker art is the wider label for the attitude behind work like it. Karen Kilimnik's installations are the usual example of both.
How do I sell a work by one of these artists?
Send photographs of the front, the back and any signature, with the gallery invoice and any labels or correspondence, for a free, confidential valuation. We check the work against its provenance, then compare a confidential private sale with auction.
