Inspiration must have been in short supply the day in 2012 that Sue Williams started Dallas, her painting featured at this year’s Frieze art fair. Like most artists, Williams undoubtedly set out to create something unique, a painting for the ages, as masterpieces are often touted. But somewhere along the line it became, not the subject of a joyous collective experience, but confirmation of Williams’ onanistic creative process; her art fantasy apparently fodder for aesthetic masturbation. Consequently, if a Pollock drip painting can be called ejaculatory, then in the interest of gender equality this Williams painting is a gusher.

Sue Williams, Dallas, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 in., 2012. Photo courtesy 303 Gallery

Amid the painterly chaos of Dallas, the head of a man peers out through the drips and smears that, quite literally, deface him. Even so, he is recognizable as a typical Feminist presentation of the classic “Fifties Man” white male oppressor. His degradation is to be expected of course, for Williams’ “world of provocative sexual politics” demands a sacrifice from the patriarchy. Also, according to a 303 Gallery press release from 2010, “Williams (work) can illustrate a conclusive and all-encompassing conjuring of everything at once.” Which explains why the blend of text, crude coproid brown blobs, and abbreviated diagrams in Dallas is essentially an upside-down roadmap to nowhere. Still, in the face of such statelessness, Williams has, like Google Maps, helpfully included the names of specific locations such as Throgs Neck in the Bronx and the Barclay Center in Brooklyn. That, plus pointless verbiage like, “luxury, privacy and the magic of Disney,” confirms that a whole lot of everything can amount to nothing.

Photo by Anthony Ausgang

Other than the incontrovertible fact that brushstrokes travel in a certain direction, Dallas seems directionless. Perhaps that is why Williams felt it necessary to include the image of a dog’s asshole; something had to take this piece somewhere. And as far as remarkable totems go, an anus is guaranteed, as this blog evidences, to garner comment. Although her painting is indisputably High Art (why else would it be at Frieze?) the use of an asshole as a major element reveals a weak attempt by Williams to appear an anti-aesthetic revolutionary. Regrettably for her, Low Brow Art is often similarly scatological, but work done in that genre is generally structured around a recognizable narrative. Within that paradigm, a dog’s asshole is critical in understanding specific pictorial storytelling. That’s not the case in Dallas, where the anus seems to be included, not as an element necessary to deciphering this painting, but as a device for making it stand out from many otherwise similar paintings by Williams. As such, the anus may be fake news, but it’s a brilliant tactic. Still that’s about it; Williams’ oeuvre already proves that she’s adept in parlaying offensive content into a lucrative art career. But repetitious use of lurid imagery does lessen its impact; perhaps that’s why most people examining Dallas at Frieze didn’t seem to care about the canine sphincter. But that’s to be expected; after all, opinions are like assholes, and every dog’s got one.