Jane Dickson

Fawbush Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above in January 1990 by the present owner

“I am attracted to explore fear, often places which are taboo, where women don’t feel safe or welcome...Night everywhere is dangerous but nightlife is glittering and promising. That gap between promise and reality is where I look.” — Jane Dickson, interview by Guillaume Smets, Foundwork, July 2020 (online)

Melody Burlesque exemplifies Jane Dickson’s sustained engagement with the psychogeography of American urban culture. Working from her self-taken photographs and lived experiences, Dickson gravitates toward marginal, often taboo spaces. Her paintings and drawings probe the tension she describes between the glamorous promise of nightlife and its underlying danger. Using blurred contours, heightened color, and shifting focus, Dickson destabilizes visual certainty to amplify narrative and psychological charge.

In Melody Burlesque, a scene typically concealed is brought insistently to the foreground, confronting the viewer with its uneasy allure. Such works have earned international recognition and have been exhibited in major institutional collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.