File:Olive Ayhens Bristlecones on the Balcony 2003-4.jpg

Painting by Olive Ayhens, Bristlecones on the Balcony (oil on linen, 75" x 59", 2003–04).The image illustrates a key earlier body of work in Olive Ayhens's that began in the mid-1990s after her move to New York City, when she produced composite, expressionistic cityscapes, that fused contradictory and imaginary realms into jumbled panoramas exploring that city's teeming urban environment as well as apocalyptic environmental concerns. As in this work, they often consisted of fantastical, vertiginous scenes of cramped and crumpled, unstable metropolises and gridlocked highways, sometimes overrun by herds of animals, primeval floods, canyons and forests. This work was publicly exhibited in prominent exhibitions, discussed in major art journals and daily press publications and acquired by major museums.

Artist Olive Ayhens. Copyright held by the artist.

Olive Ayhens

Entire artwork

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a key earlier body of work in Olive Ayhens's career beginning in the mid-1990s: her composite, packed, New York City-based cityscapes, whose compositions fuse contradictory and imaginary realms into "jumbled panoramas" that have been described as neo-expressionist, "urban visionary," folk- like, raucous and "both apocalyptic and joyous." Critics compare her art to that of well-known cityscape artists Rackstraw Downes and Yvonne Jacquette, Hieronymus Bosch and expressionists Oskar Kokoschka and George Grosz. They often depict catastrophic environmental allegories, which are balanced in tone by a playful painting style employing saturated, confectionary hues, a disarmingly loose technique, unexpected juxtapositions, and an elastic sense of space. Because the article is about an artist and her work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this early, foundational body of work, which brought Ayhens early recognition through exhibitions, coverage by major critics and publications and museum acquisitions. Ayhens'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 Olive Ayhens, 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.