Jonathan Lasker On abstraction at the end of the 20th century

American artist Jonathan Lasker (b. 1948) engages both the traditional painterly concerns of fine art and, at the same time, the revolutionary new options for cultural creation that are so seductively proposed by new multimedia and computer technologies. Reproduced here in actual size are some 50 of his "maquettes" smallscale paintings generally only about 6 x 5 inches in size. Lasker conceives these as models for larger works, but with the insistence that the full-size finished paintings exactly reproduce the small-scale initial studies. So, these "maquettes" are not sketches or studies in the conventional sense; instead, like film scripts or computer programs, they function themselves as originals in the literal sense of bing what is then reproduced in the final work or product. This method allows Lasker to reincorporate the hand of the artist in to the postmodern space of technological reproduction. And to humanize that evolving space. "One of my intents in making these paintings is to support the position of the human hand, and thus the integrity of human identity," writes Jonathan Lasker in his introduction to this volume. "It is true," he continues, "that these paintings freely ingest many aspects of our media-based and mechanistic society, but always as a foil for the expressions of the human hand and psyche." Noted critics Rainer Crone and David Moos provide a wide- ranging analysis of the interplay between the painterly tradition of abstract expressionism and the emerging new cyber-space of media technology. (German edition available ISBN 3-89322- 534-X)