Love at Second Sight, 1975
Steve Gianakos, born in New York in 1938, has followed a path very different from that of his older brother Cristos. While studying industrial design at Pratt Institute, he began to make sculpture, and then graphic work and drawings, all influenced by Pop art and featuring a playful quality full of sardonic twists. Two years after graduating from Pratt, he began to show in-group exhibitions, and in 1969 had his first solo exhibition at Fischbach Gallery. Though intimate in scale, his small drawings suggest large and elegant cartoons. These are often multiples-a series of Moms and Mrs. Macdonalds, then of Sperms and Greek Boys and Weather Girls, Penguins and Gorillas. He has commented that his "multiples have something to do with the idea of stereotypes. And they're a way of expressing differences in the same things."
The Penguin and Gorilla series show birds or beasts doing what humans do: working out at the gym, wheeling a patient on a gurney, building houses. But as artist critic Philip Tsiaras pointed out in a review in Arts Magazine, these creatures are deadpan, incapable of expression, and therefore go beyond the merely funny or amusing into the realm of serious satire, by showing us to ourselves. The drawings and paintings of human beings seem to have greater shock value. Beyond a sneaking delight at someone else's pratfall and the witty, imaginative, and sometimes cruel irony of a Steve Gianakos cartoon, the viewer is held by the artistry of the work. His use of positive and negative space formed by the stark contrast of white and black, the counterpoint between opposing or complementary shapes with in a tightly constructed single unit, and the beauty of the drawing all contribute to the creation of seductive but disturbing work.
His renderings of women have been described in thoughtful, admiring reviews as "antisex," "truly perverse," and "sexually aggressive:'" Gianakos observes," work more with women [as subject matter] because I have stereotypes for them. I don't have stereotypes for men." He comments that he supposes he is "a male chauvinist," nodding yes when asked if this is the influence of Greek American culture.