Final Girl Digital posted the following Note on the Cricket Guest Substack:
“These paintings by mike cockrill speak to me”
The paintings that spoke to Final Girl Digital were Cockrill’s:
- “Grave Condition” (1997)
- “Indepence Day” (1997)
- “The Mirror Game” (1997)
- "Clown Piñata" (2015-220)
- “The Red Guard” (1997)
- "Interrogation"
Each painting depicts sadistic schoolgirls killing and/or torturing clowns. Of the series of paintings, Felicia Feaster, wrote in the New Art Examiner (July-August 1997) that the subjects of the paintings were circus clowns and “pre-adolescent girls in party dresses” and that the paintings were “vapid’ but that they “achieve[d] a shockingly layered profusion of meaning”. Feaster:
With their apparently vapid subject matter of circus clowns and little girls, the Baby Doll Clown Killers achieve a shockingly layered profusion of meaning. Two standards of cuteness face off as if in some apocalyptic jihad, as pre-adolescent girls in party dresses aim pistols and bayonets at the bowed heads of circus clowns who suggest an inferior race tamed by their evolutionary superiors.
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| "Clown Piñata" |
Interestingly, "Clown Piñata" alludes to Cockrill’s other motifs slash themes, which involve sadistic and salacious schoolgirls. For example, in "Clown Piñata", the nymphet, in the already cleavage-baring yellow dress, has her white bra exposed, and the teen in the background is enjoying a smoke in her (satin) bra and panties while observing the pre-teen sadism.
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| “Target” |
In “Target” (2009), another painting in the Baby Doll Clown Killers series, a pre-adolescent girl has her knee in the crotch (area) of a clown, but as she paints the clown’s nose to match her crop top, another nymphet looks upon art patrons mischievously, while the strap of her tank top reveals her braless cleavage. And note that she does not have flush fountains.
In 2006, Cockrill’s Over the Garden Wall exhibition was held at the 31 Grand in Brooklyn. Ben La Rocco posted a review of the exhibition, “100 words on Mike Cockrill”, on The Brooklyn Rail (April 2006). In the post, La Rocco wrote that Cockrill’s “garden is a place where childhood play meets adult sexuality”. Specifically, La Rocco referenced Balthus, Cockrill’s “unprepossessing” “Girl before a Mirror”, and Cockrill’s “Naughty”, which La Rocco referred to as a “tour de force”. La Rocco opined:
Mike Cockrill’s current exhibition of paintings at 31 Grand is entitled Over the Garden Wall. One part John Currin, two parts Balthus, Cockrill’s garden is a place where childhood play meets adult sexuality in an elixir equally suggestive and nostalgic. Children poised on the verge of adolescence feign poses to determine if they fit in [...] His symbolism is perhaps best when it’s subtle: his unprepossessing “Girl before a Mirror” is as effective as his art history laden tour de force, “Naughty.”
“Naughty”
In terms of Cockrill’s “Naughty” (2005), a naughty nymphet looks mischievously at gawkers while licking icing from her fingers. Cockrill drew attention to her spread legs via her brother’s hand, which barely obscures his sister’s panties.
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| Figure: 1 |
Eagle-eyed art connoisseurs may have noticed another “Naughty” nymphet in the painting (See Figure: 1) who is walking towards the mischievous one with her white dress is inexplicably raised revealingly.
In terms of La Rocco’s reference to Cockrill’s work being “two parts Balthus”, La Rocco was referencing the fact that Cockrill and Balthus shared the same muse, which is the suggestive nymphet. For example, if one compares Cockrill’s “Class Princess” (2003-04) and “Bunnyheart” (2003) to Balthus’ “Thérèse dreaming” (1938), La Rocco’s reference should be apparent.
The description of “Thérèse dreaming”, which is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), that is posted on The Met’s website will suffice as a description of “Class Princess” and “Bunnyheart” as well. The Met related that Thérèse is a “lost in thought” 12 or 13-year-old unmolded raw spirit whose “adolescent sexuality” is “potent” with a “lack of inhibition”; however, The Met admitted that “Thérèse dreaming” is “unsettling”.
Balthus’s model, Thérèse Blanchard, appears—as the title of this work suggests—unaware of her surroundings and lost in thought. Blanchard was about twelve or thirteen when the artist painted this canvas. [...] Balthus, like countless modern artists, believed the subject of the child to be a source of raw spirit, not yet molded by societal expectations. Many early twentieth‑century avant‑garde artists [...] viewed adolescent sexuality as a potent site of psychological vulnerability as well as lack of inhibition [...] While it may be unsettling to our eyes today, Thérèse Dreaming draws on this history.
In addition to painting salacious schoolgirls cavorting with cowering clowns, Cockrill painted schoolgirls cavorting with schoolgirls. In “Firstlove” (2008), the pre-adolescent girls, who may not even be of school age, lips lightly touch as Cockrill lowered the blonde’s dress to reveal her budding breasts, while he raised her summer dress to expose her budding bottom-grass. In “Forbidden” (2006), the touching nymphets are bottomless while the one on the left looks cunningly at gawkers while her forbidden fruit is barely covered by the leaf. And in “Adoration”, a chorus of children sing as two midriff-bared schoolgirls embrace and prepare to kiss.
“Teasing the Blind”
In media, sapphic diversions are often depicted with age-gap affairs (e.g., Lolita\Miller’s Girl (2024)). Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that, in addition to painting salacious schoolgirls, Cockrill depicted them in age-gap situations as well. For example, in “Teasing the Blind” (2004), Cockrill drew two schoolgirls teasing the blind as the blonde in pink smiles shyly as the girl in yellow confidently raises her dress to tantalize the blind man with what is under her white panties.
Per the website Mike Cockrill, Cockrill, whom was “[c]lassically trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts”, began exhibiting his works “in Brooklyn and the East Village in the early 1980s. In addition to his 2006 Over the Garden Wall exhibition at the Grand in Brooklyn, Cockrill’s work has been exhibited over 50 times. For example, in 1994, Cockrill’s paintings were co-exhibited in the Discontents and Debutantes exhibition at the University Galleries of Illinois State University. The gallery’s description of the exhibition relates that the paintings occupy a “precarious social interzone between fantasy and taboo [...] childhood and adulthood” and that Cockrill’s “paintings of girls on [the] cusp of adolescence exude an ambiguous eroticism”.
Discontents and Debutantes features paintings by two artists whose imagery occupies a precarious social interzone between fantasy and taboo, private and public, childhood and adulthood, and personal and media-induced realities. New York artist Mike Cockrill [...] has exhibited paintings dealing with sex, politics and dysfunctional family life since the early 80s. His monumental paintings of girls on [the] cusp of adolescence exude an ambiguous eroticism that leads us to rethink our views on voyeurism and decorum [...]
"Discontents and Debutantes" at the University Galleries of Illinois State University
Cockrill’s paintings exhibited in Discontents and Debutantes are mostly of lounging, perfectly nude or topless, girls on the cusp of adolescence, but Cockrill made their eroticism unambiguous as their legs are often spread suggestively.
Of course, Cockrill and Balthus aren’t the only artists who utilized the allure of nymphets to sell art. Previously, to name a few, we wrote about the Disturbing Innocence exhibited at The FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea, Petra Collins' Discharge exhibit at the Capricious in Chinatown, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Marzella (1910).
Lastly, recall that Feaster opined in the New Art Examiner that Cockrill’s work is “vapid”, but in an interview with Poets and Artists (Aug 19 N.D.), Cockrill shared that his works have “a cheerfulness mixed with the darkness” accompanied by “sexually charge[d] undertones”. Cockrill:
“There is a cheerfulness mixed with the darkness, so to speak. Little girls in party dresses conducting genocide against circus clowns. Children’s book illustration style works with sexually charge[d] undertones.”
