Review: Dan Fischer, Derek Eller Gallery
Meghan Dailey, Artforum
February 2004
Dan Fischer’s art of homage and appropriation reveals its maker as both passionate fan and savvy practitioner. Well-known photographs of artists and artworks are the originals for Fischer’s detailed graphite-on-paper copies; his recent show included dozens of variations on twentieth-century portraiture, including Cindy Sherman in an untitled film still; Piero Manzoni grinning and holding a can of Artist’s Shit; Robert Gober nearly unrecognizable in a wedding gown; Piet Mondrian in his tidy smock calmly regarding a grid painting; and Jean-Michel Basquiat sitting on one of his crate constructions. There’s also a rendering of Fountain, an image so synonymous with Marcel Duchamp that it almost functions as a portrait of the artist. The photos that Fischer copies are often uncredited and rarely artworks in and of themselves; an image of Bridget Riley in stocking feet peering out from between her Op paintings is arresting, but we think of Riley before we think of Lord Snowdon, who actually took the picture. […]