René Santos (1954-1986) Puerto Rican/American, Oil and Encaustic on Linen. One of his final works, a blue expanse with male portrait in center, part of his Frame series. Framed.

Overall: 33 3/4 x 29 1/2 in. 

Sight: 31 3/4 x 27 3/4 in. 

Depth: 2 in. 

#3584 . 

René Santos was born Carlos René Santos in Puerto Rico in 1954. As a child he became infatuated with photography as a way of escaping the poverty and sexual identity crises he experienced. Considered a child prodigy, he obtained a scholarship and early admission to Tufts University in Massachusetts, where he received a Bachelor’s in 1973. He completed his Master’s in Art History in 1976 at Hunter College, where he studied with art critic Rosalind Krauss. During his short life he had four solo exhibitions and participated in several group shows, and his work was included in several exhibitions organized after his death such as a retrospective in 1994 at the Grey Gallery and Study Center at New York University. Among his main influences were the pictorial work of Manet and Velázquez, the philosophy of Heidegger, and the literature of Proust, a testament to his prolific nature. Upon moving to New York City Santos quickly became associated with the camp aesthetic of “style over content,” which allowed him to finally openly explore queer culture. In 1980 he exhibited a series of photo-novels based on opera, B-films, and pulp fiction, satirizing popular taste and sensibility. His series of paintings portraying purebred dogs, done in the Romantic style in the early eighties, illustrates his critique of the rejection of styles of the past by his contemporaries, who categorized him as a reactionary. He used the sound of a carousel slide projector contrapuntally with images of daily life, portraits, newspaper photos, stills from films and TV programs, animals etchings, botanical illustrations, and architectural ornamentation projected through an opening in the exhibition’s entrance wall. This style was widely imitated by his contemporaries in the following decades, although at the time it was criticized as “too busy” and “incomprehensible.” Dissatisfied with the standard exhibition model of a coherent, chronological narrative flow, he developed his next showing as an atlas of images to retell the memories of European civilization using moving panels onto which he affixed photos and images from various periods and categories. The avant-garde art scene of the 1980s welcomed him with open arms, and he became one of the first Puerto Ricans to exhibit his work at the Venice Biennale. He also frequently taught techniques of photography, painting, and philosophy to anyone who would come to his apartment. Only a small handful of his works are available to the public, in the collections of The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan, since most of this art remains in the possession of his family, making pieces that find their way to market incredibly rare. His works from the late 1970s to the early 1980s generally present hyperrealistic figures against an Expressionist background. These works are based on characters from films, fotonovelas, or magazines, which are removed from their original context. In his final years the main characters are René himself alongside his feminine alter ego Renee, portraying scenes dealing with love, art, intolerance, madness, jealousy, external appearance, as well as other issues. One of his last works were the portraits (full and empty) painted from photos by Félix Nadar, completed just a few months before he died in 1986 from AIDS-related complications at the age of 32.

Small spots throughout.