New Comer 2000

Michel Majerus made this painting "New Comer" at some point before 2002 with acrylic on canvas. The orange and yellow palette is pretty bold, and with this typeface, the work is a bit like Pop Art, but it has a much cooler feel. There’s something about Majerus’s application of paint, a kind of flatness that, paradoxically, gives it depth. Look at the way the yellow letters are slightly off-register from their orange outlines, like a silkscreen where the layers don't quite line up. It is as if this were mass-produced, but hand-made at the same time. The surface has this slightly mottled, uneven texture which gives it a very contemporary feel. "New Comer" isn't all that different from someone like Albert Oehlen, who also mixed high and low culture in his painting. Both of them are having a conversation with the history of painting, and with where painting is going next, which is pretty thrilling.