Phyllis Bramson ‘Relationships, Anywhere They Take Me' at Portrait Society

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If your first impression of Phyllis Bramson’s show “Relationships, Anywhere They Take Me,” at Portrait Society happened to be one of kitschy and whimsical paintings with some supplemental objects thrown in for support, I would understand. If you first pegged it as naïve and juvenile, I would probably let it go. Even if you called the work simple and unrefined, I could absorb the blow. But if you spent a significant amount of time with the work and didn’t leave thinking of her as a maker rather than a painter, a builder of personal spaces rather than a renderer, and a storyteller, rather than image maker, I’d go to the mat.

Indeed, Bramson’s work reads from a distance as colorful and intricate in the same way a teenager’s bedroom might. As busy and fizzy and lush and various as possible. Restraint and omission are clearly not of primary importance. If Phil Spector hit teenagers with a wall of sound, Phyllis Bramson hits you with a wall of sight, every bit as retinally maximal as “Be My Baby” is sonically maximal. Upon closer inspection, however, that wall of form and content begins to separate into a kaleidoscoping vision of the particular subjects that populate personal narratives. If it’s a wall, it’s all collected aggregate and just enough mortar. True, her works are painted or drawn without a preoccupation with the natural world, but I don’t think anyone engaged with this show for more than five minutes will continue to think that dwelling on a single outward-facing reality is important to her. 

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Bramson’s work is more a stream-of-conscious cocktail of fantasy, memory, and appropriation than it is an observed and rendered picture of something. The experience of seeing the show, too, is much more destabilizing than looking at any observational composition. Sifting through her lavish paintings and objects feels like psychic archeology; a shard of a fairy tale here, a fragment of a personal desire there, a randomly placed found object somewhere else. One senses that Bramson’s production is assembled as her reveries unroll across the threshold from the subconscious to the conscious mind. For example, We All Share the Same Breath (Seven Dwarves), offers a bawdy and personally embellished version of Snow White’s companions. That might be Sleepy and Doc in the center of the canvas, but the third companion looks like a French clown from two centuries ago. And the lady at the top of the composition resembles Victorine Meurent more than Snow White. Four more stylized dwarfs peek in from left. The painting is somehow innocent and lurid at the same time; the trappings of a mature and searching mind scrubbing and sorting, mixing and materializing.

Fragmentation and Clarity

That growing sense of a fragmented narrative stems from the clarity of Bramson’s subject matter. Not her stories, but the pieces and parts themselves. Her work is assembled one discrete component at a time, and when such discrete objects shatter, or are formed shattered as in Bramson’s case, they leave shards that beg for reassembly and restitution. In this light, a found-object sculpture like the extraordinary The Good Keeper of the Animals and Birdsisn’t all that different from the paintings. Her two-dimensional work, like the sculpture, is constructed piece-by independently freighted piece into fantastically curious agglomerations of diverse personal material. 

If you look closer at any of her paintings, take the eponymous Relationships: Anywhere it Take Me, for example, one can in fact see that much of the surface is built up with collaged fabric, objects, and other materials. I had to put my eye at the edge of the canvas and look across its foreshortened surface to understand the amount of post-painterly application. A red doll dress and assorted flowers in the case of this painting. When I noticed this additional layer, it hit me like a revelation that her painting and her making were of the same make and model. She paints like a builder, and she builds like a storyteller. It’s all additive. Very little blending, refining or borrowing from the Peter of content to pay the Paul of form. They are simply intuited accumulations of yesses and accreting connections. Bramson’s work, on view by appointment at Portrait Society through the end of August, amounts to a teeming, joyful visual anthology of building and growing relationships, followed assiduously by a courageous artist wherever they may take her.

Openings: 

August 20– August 26, 2023

Museum of Wisconsin Art

Art and Chalk Fest

Sunday, August 20, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio

Sunday, August 20, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Lakeside at MAM

Sunday, August 20, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights

Sunday, August 20, 2 p.m.–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Gallery Talk: “In Honor of Kevin Fahey”

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Thursday, August 24, 12–1 p.m.

Warehouse Art Museum

WAM Artist Talk Series, Kevin Miyazaki

Thursday, August 24, 4 p.m.

Wales Community Park

Donna Lexa Memorial Art Fair

Saturday, August 26, 9 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio

Saturday, August 26, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Story Time in the Galleries

Saturday, August 26, 10:30–11 a.m.

Okauchee Lions Community Park

Festival of Food and Art

Saturday, August 26, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights

Saturday, August 26, 2–3 p.m.

Openings: 

August 13– August 19, 2023

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
  • Sunday, August 13, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Lakeside at MAM
  • Sunday, August 13, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

Charles Allis Museum of Art

  • Storytime at the Allis!
  • Sunday, August 13, 1–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
  • Sunday, August 13, 2–3 p.m.

Saint Kate – the Arts Hotel

  • Jeff Zimpel, Artist-in-Residence “A Closing Gathering”
  • Sunday, August 13, 2–5 p.m.

Grohmann Museum of Art

  • Kids Day
  • Tuesday, August 15, 10 a.m.–2 p.m.

MARN Art + Culture Hub

  • Milwaukee Fashion Network
  • Thursday, August 17, 6–8 p.m.

WAM Artist Talk Series

  • Nirmal Raja & Lois Bielefeld
  • Thursday, August 17, 4 p.m.

The Alice Wilds

  • Opening Reception: Breehan James and Barbara Sullivan “Florence/Sunset”
  • Friday, August 18, 5–8 p.m.

James May Gallery

  • Asana & Art
  • Saturday, August 19, 10 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Story Time in the Galleries
  • Saturday, August 19, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
  • Saturday, August 19, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Underscore

  • “New Work by Caitlin Rooney,” opening reception
  • Saturday, August 19, 6–9 p.m.

Museum of Wisconsin Art

  • Art and Chalk Fest
  • Sunday/Sunday, August 19/20, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Lakeside at MAM
  • Sunday, August 19, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

Lynden Sculpture Garden

  • Home 2023: August Craft Market and Fashion Day
  • Saturday, August 19, 1–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Unveiling Celebration: Mural by ArtXpress Teen Interns
  • Sunday, August 19,1 –3:30 p.m.

The Suburban

  • Opening Reception for artist Greg Smith
  • Saturday, August 19, 1–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
  • Sunday, August 19, 2–3 p.m.