MICHAEL TOLE

MICHAEL TOLE

The Most Dangerous Game -- Nymphs and Satyrs Edition, 2022

oil on canvas

48h x 72w in
121.92h x 182.88w cm

The Most Dangerous Game: Nymphs and Satyrs Edition, is a conflation of the short story by Richard Connell and the mythological trope of nymphs and satyrs. In, The Most Dangerous Game, two men hunt each other for sport on a tropical island, creating the most epic, most toxically masculine sport hunt possible. In the classical nymph and satyr trope, lusty satyrs chase nubile nymphs through the woods in a game that varies from playful to predatory depending on the artist. In this revision, it is the nymphs that do the chasing, and they have made common cause with the hunters' quarry to fully turn the tables on the hunter/satyrs.

Formally speaking, the painting is an experiment in creating emphasis using color intensity rather than value. The central focal point is distinguished from its surroundings by setting off hot, high intensity colors from a halo of cool pastels.

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MICHAEL TOLE

The Rescue. Diana and her Acolytes, 2020

Oil Painting depicting a hunt.

48h x 72w in
121.92h x 182.88w cm

This is a comic meditation on interventionism.

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MICHAEL TOLE

The Concert, 2017

oil on canvas

48h x 72w in
121.92h x 182.88w cm

The Concert appropriates and marries two disparate art historical references, Titian’s, The Flaying of Marsyas, and Barbara Kruger’s, You Construct Intricate Rituals Which Allow You to Touch the Skin of Other Men. This piece seeks to probe the source and nature of our discomfort with the nude male body. In our culture, the male body is rarely displayed as an object of beauty. When it is, it is automatically described as “homo-erotic,” a term that implies that it appeals only to a niche audience, and denies its relevance or potential appeal to society as a whole. To avoid our discomfort, male nudity must always be contextualized into a narrative of fighting, dying, struggling, or making. There is no male equivalent to the beauty pageant.

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MICHAEL TOLE

The Revelation, 2021

oil on canvas

52h x 63w in
132.08h x 160.02w cm

Here's to celebrating working moms, especially my wife, mother, and my departed grandmothers. Nana was a teacher, basketball coach, and principal in the middle of nowhere, Texas. Mur was the first woman CPA in Texas. When widowed, she went to school to become an accountant. She was hired as the accountant for Stanton ISD, and worked there for decades. When she retired, they hired 3 men to replace her. She was worth 3 men. Here's to women who run the world while helping with math homework!

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MICHAEL TOLE

A Coalition of Willing Goddesses Topples Mars, Commonly Known as A Death of Sardanapalus, 2018

oil on canvas

60h x 44w in
152.40h x 111.76w cm

A Death of Sardanapalus is a revisionist history in which I reimagine the fall of the last Assyrian king, famously portrayed by Delacroix. In my reimagining, far from being passive victims, Sardanapalus’s concubines are about to perform a coup de gras, without him suspecting a thing.

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MICHAEL TOLE

The Dissidents: Discourse on the Golden Mean, 2022

oil on canvas

48h x 64w in
121.92h x 162.56w cm

This work draws a connection between the didactic moralizing tendencies of Neo Classicism (represented in the style of the painting) and Modernism (represented in the architectural setting). Though modern art eschews the naturalistic imagery used by Neo Classicists, both movements pursued a self-important, austere, self-consciously masculine aesthetic that they saw as synonymous with virtue. Set in the MoMA courtyard, a passel of men lounge about, regarding a golden statue which looks terribly out of place in this modernist vitrine. The uncomfortable architectural setting, prisonlike and cold, provides a foil for the odalisque-like young men sprawled on hard stone benches and paying homage to the central idol.

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MICHAEL TOLE

Cleopatra, Having Reconsidered Suicide, Employs Asymmetrical Tactics, 2022

oil on canvas

48h x 48w in
121.92h x 121.92w cm

This painting reimagines the moment when Cleopatra contemplates suicide after her battlefield loss to Octavian. In this revisionist history, Cleopatra thinks better of suicide, and at the last minute redirects her servants to pass the basket of fruit with the asp on to the triumphant Octavian who sweeps in with his entourage. In this scene, Octavian reaches for an apple, triggering the asp to strike. This, like most of my recent work, reimagines historical, mythological, and literary motifs to destabilize the inherent power structures within those narratives. The style adopted is Rococo, which coincided with the rise of Colonialism. The style therefore relates to the historical narrative of this piece which shows the conquest and colonization of a colonial ruler.

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MICHAEL TOLE

Diana Contemplating the Sublimity of the Paleo Diet, 2018

oil on canvas

40h x 30w in
101.60h x 76.20w cm

This is a meditation on the curious relationship that has developed between contemporary body goals, the current perception of our “natural diet,” and the impact that diet may have on our environment.

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MICHAEL TOLE

The Aesthetic Martyr, 2019

oil on canvas

36h x 24w in
91.44h x 60.96w cm

This painting reacts to the John Berger quote: "Men act, women appear." This truism has been demonstrated in Western art countless times over the past two millennia. Second wave feminists, in particular Linda Nochlin, have expounded upon how Western art has turned women into passive objects of delectation. This is "settled case law," in my opinion, as in the opinion of most people. It is undeniable. However, the inverse of this truism has been little talked about...namely that Western art rarely allows the male figure to simply appear. The male figure, according to many art treatises, must always be active, virile, strong. The male body is valued for what it can do, not simply for what it is or how it appears. Among the few times the male figure is allowed simply to appear for aesthetic appreciation is when that male figure is dead or sleeping. Examples of this are Michelangelo's, Dying Slave, Girodet's, Endymion, any number of St. Sebastians and Pietas. This beautiful male nude is immobilized and dying, thus permitting him to express his aesthetic value for the first time.

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MICHAEL TOLE

Burning Man, 2022

oil on linen

24h x 36w in
60.96h x 91.44w cm

Orientalism was a 19th century movement in European academic art that portrayed the near east. Its near photorealistic style gave it a pretense of documentary "Truthiness" that belied the egregiously inaccurate exoticization and othering of the cultures it portrayed. Here, I am turning that faux-documentary aesthetic on an exotic aspect of our own culture. Festival culture is a fascinating and relatively new phenomenon, and the aesthetic of its marketing images on social media is so strongly reminiscent of Orientalist painting that I had to explore the potential relationship evident there. In depictions of Festivals like Burning Man, I detect an attempt to self-exoticize--to impart to ourselves an invented otherness that doesn't exist in our day to day lives. I find this an interesting contrast to Orientalism, in which westerners projected an othering exoticism onto foreign cultures. In festival culture, we adopt identities not our own in a search for originality, individuality, and to escape from banality.

With this painting I'm rounding out my Baroque explorations by appropriating a more Dutch, mercantilist aesthetic.

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MICHAEL TOLE

Modern Marlowe, 2022

oil on panel

24h x 30w in
60.96h x 76.20w cm

My conservative, Church of Christ grandmother lived in a pristine little mid-century modern house in the middle-of-no-where, Texas. Its trim, Protestant exterior belied a decadent mishmash of sculpted chocolate carpeting, and gold gilt Rococo furnishings inside. Strewn about the living room walls were frothy little reproductions of pearly, 18th century goddesses frolicking amid forests and streams--mocking the clean modern lines of the room. These prints of Bouchers and Fragonards were so pretty, so decorative, so innocuous in their style that it didn’t occur to me until years later when I studied them in college that they were lesbian love scenes. In these anodyne fetes, young women roiled, breasts and bottoms abounding, gazed into one another's doe eyes, and caressed fulsome cheeks. Though overtly erotic, their style was so decorative and soft that even my religiously conservative grandmother experienced no cognitive dissonance between the racy content and her religious beliefs. I find this tension between style and content, fascinating. The trio of paintings: The Summit of the Gods, Sea Gods, and Modern Marlowe are an exploration of it. I am unaware of any equivalent all male scenes from the Rococo period. This appears to be an inherent bias within the tradition. With this work, I am trying to pry open the tradition and make a space the male figure as decorative--pretty. I say "pretty" instead of "beautiful" because the "beautiful" can be threatening or challenging. "Pretty" is a term we generally apply to unambiguously attractive, comforting, and accepted things: flowers, puppies, babies, etc. I want to know if men can be pretty in the same way those 18th century goddesses are. I think I’ve made a pretty good visual argument for that perception. I'll know I've succeeded if the next generation of grandmas can host their women's bible study group in a living room hung with these paintings.

My grandmother likely bought these prints at about the time John Berger coined the truism: “Men act and women appear.” In one sense, this painting is asking if it is possible for men simply to appear, without a narrative justification. The mythological titles of this trio are intentionally vague enough to let the images reside mostly in a non-narrative context, placing emphasis on its aesthetics, not its story.

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MICHAEL TOLE

Summit of the Gods, 2022

oil on panel

24h x 30w in
60.96h x 76.20w cm

My conservative, Church of Christ grandmother lived in a pristine little mid-century modern house in the middle-of-no-where, Texas. Its trim, Protestant exterior belied a decadent mishmash of sculpted chocolate carpeting, and gold gilt Rococo furnishings inside. Strewn about the living room walls were frothy little reproductions of pearly, 18th century goddesses frolicking amid forests and streams--mocking the clean modern lines of the room. These prints of Bouchers and Fragonards were so pretty, so decorative, so innocuous in their style that it didn’t occur to me until years later when I studied them in college that they were lesbian love scenes. In these anodyne fetes, young women roiled, breasts and bottoms abounding, gazed into one another's doe eyes, and caressed fulsome cheeks. Though overtly erotic, their style was so decorative and soft that even my religiously conservative grandmother experienced no cognitive dissonance between the racy content and her religious beliefs. I find this tension between style and content, fascinating. The trio of paintings: The Summit of the Gods, Sea Gods, and Modern Marlowe are an exploration of it. I am unaware of any equivalent all male scenes from the Rococo period. This appears to be an inherent bias within the tradition. With this work, I am trying to pry open the tradition and make a space the male figure as decorative--pretty. I say "pretty" instead of "beautiful" because the "beautiful" can be threatening or challenging. "Pretty" is a term we generally apply to unambiguously attractive, comforting, and accepted things: flowers, puppies, babies, etc. I want to know if men can be pretty in the same way those 18th century goddesses are. I think I’ve made a pretty good visual argument for that perception. I'll know I've succeeded if the next generation of grandmas can host their women's bible study group in a living room hung with these paintings.

My grandmother likely bought these prints at about the time John Berger coined the truism: “Men act and women appear.” In one sense, this painting is asking if it is possible for men simply to appear, without a narrative justification. The mythological titles of this trio are intentionally vague enough to let the images reside mostly in a non-narrative context, placing emphasis on its aesthetics, not its story.

Inquire

MICHAEL TOLE

Sea Gods, 2022

oil on panel

18h x 24w in
45.72h x 60.96w cm

My conservative, Church of Christ grandmother lived in a pristine little mid-century modern house in the middle-of-no-where, Texas. Its trim, Protestant exterior belied a decadent mishmash of sculpted chocolate carpeting, and gold gilt Rococo furnishings inside. Strewn about the living room walls were frothy little reproductions of pearly, 18th century goddesses frolicking amid forests and streams--mocking the clean modern lines of the room. These prints of Bouchers and Fragonards were so pretty, so decorative, so innocuous in their style that it didn’t occur to me until years later when I studied them in college that they were lesbian love scenes. In these anodyne fetes, young women roiled, breasts and bottoms abounding, gazed into one another's doe eyes, and caressed fulsome cheeks. Though overtly erotic, their style was so decorative and soft that even my religiously conservative grandmother experienced no cognitive dissonance between the racy content and her religious beliefs. I find this tension between style and content, fascinating. The trio of paintings: The Summit of the Gods, Sea Gods, and Modern Marlowe are an exploration of it. I am unaware of any equivalent all male scenes from the Rococo period. This appears to be an inherent bias within the tradition. With this work, I am trying to pry open the tradition and make a space the male figure as decorative--pretty. I say "pretty" instead of "beautiful" because the "beautiful" can be threatening or challenging. "Pretty" is a term we generally apply to unambiguously attractive, comforting, and accepted things: flowers, puppies, babies, etc. I want to know if men can be pretty in the same way those 18th century goddesses are. I think I’ve made a pretty good visual argument for that perception. I'll know I've succeeded if the next generation of grandmas can host their women's bible study group in a living room hung with these paintings.

My grandmother likely bought these prints at about the time John Berger coined the truism: “Men act and women appear.” In one sense, this painting is asking if it is possible for men simply to appear, without a narrative justification. The mythological titles of this trio are intentionally vague enough to let the images reside mostly in a non-narrative context, placing emphasis on its aesthetics, not its story.

Inquire

Revisionist Histories

new paintings

October 26 – December 10, 2022

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Press Release

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Michael Tole's Revisionist Histories featured in International Art Exhibitions

by: International Art Exhibitions