File:Louise Belcourt My Beautiful Family 1995.jpg

Painting by Louise Belcourt, My Beautiful Family (oil on canvas, 72" x 80", 1995). The image illustrates a key early period and body of work in Louise Belcourt's career, when she first gained recognition in the late 1980s and 1990s for paintings that critics characterized as abstract and intensely physical, combining sensuality, aggression and raw feeling in a manner that ran counter to the cool, conceptual art dominant of the time. This work and related works have been publicly exhibited in prominent venues, discussed widely in national art and daily press publications, and collected by major art institutions.

Artist Louise Belcourt. Copyright held by the artist.

Louise Belcourt

Entire artwork

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a key early period and body of work in Louise Belcourt's career: her abstract, intensely physical paintings combining sensuality, aggression and raw feeling in a manner that ran counter to the cool, conceptual art dominant of the time, which gained recognition in the late 1980s and 1990s. Characteristic works of this period (such as this one) feature elemental, mysterious dark- or blood-red biomorphic blobs, that hover on layered, creamy surfaces suggesting flesh or earth, which Belcourt distressed with scuffs, scars, punctures and stains. National critics noted them for their vulnerability, mix of deliberateness and happenstance, understated optical effects and shifting figure-ground relationships. 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 visualize a key developmental phase in her art, which brought early recognition from major art journals, daily press publications, and museums. Belcourt's work of this type and this work in particular is discussed in the article and by prominent critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Louise Belcourt, 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.