Lari Pittman. Flying Carpet with Magic Mirrors for a Distorted Nation. 2013. Cel-vinyl, spray enamel on canvas over wood panel, 108 x 360 1/8” (274.3 x 914.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, The Broad Art Foundation, and Jill and Peter Kraus. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles. © Lari Pittman

How does an artist approach the grand tradition of history painting in the era of late capitalism, a time marked not by great heroes and legendary victories but by systemic inequity and unrelenting violence? With Flying Carpet with Magic Mirrors for a Distorted Nation, part of a group of three “flying carpet” paintings that was the centerpiece of his 2013 exhibition From a Late Western Impaerium, Lari Pittman considers the heavy psychological toll of life under a declining empire. The intricate contents of Flying Carpet sweep the viewer from the distant historical past to the distant imagined future as Pittman traces art historical lineages and the distortions and magical thinking of contemporary culture. Recently acquired by MoMA, this majestic painting is currently on view in the Museum’s lobby.

While a student at the California Institute of the Arts in the 1970s, Pittman was inspired by feminist theory to explore neglected corners of history such as the decorative arts, and now mines this sort of rich cultural heritage for visual cues in his work. A virtuosic painter who weds historic decorative techniques with contemporary Pop and street art sensibilities, Pittman integrates issues of politics and gender into his lushly detailed paintings, creating a specifically queer and particularly Californian artistic language. As he planned the flying carpet paintings, Pittman looked to Savonnerie knotted-pile carpets, the favorite of 17th-century French kings. Replacing the Savonnerie-style medallions with mirrors in a manner that recalls the style of French carpet makers, Pittman abstracts natural, architectural, and cultural elements to create an opulent visual terrain.

Lari Pittman. welve Fayum From a Late Western Impaerium (After Hermenegildo Bustos) (detail). 2013. Cel-vinyl and spray enamel on gessoed paper, 22 1/8 x 18 1/8” (56.2 x 46 cm), framed. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles. © Lari Pittman

The portraits within the so-called “magic mirrors” take inspiration from two historic painting traditions: portraiture of the self-taught Mexican painter Hermenegildo Bustos (1832–1907) and Fayum—burial portraits of the upper classes from the late Roman Empire, when Rome’s imperial reign extended into Egypt. Pittman also makes reference to both sources in a series of 12 preparatory drawings called Twelve Fayum From a Late Western Impaerium (After Hermenegildo Bustos) (2013). Pittman’s interest in these portrait traditions points to his long-standing investment in the history of painting; the Fayum portraits in particular represent a key link in the Western painting tradition and provide important early evidence of a painting tradition that stretched from the classical age through Byzantine and Renaissance art.

At the same time, as commissioned portraiture, both the 19th-century Mexican and late Roman points of reference speak to vanity, even in death. Pittman’s reference to the funerary tradition of the Fayum paintings insinuates that the figures in Flying Carpet’s mirrors may be as good as dead; their perversely misshapen faces and dour expressions suggest the internal, psychological burdens of life in a culture of violence and obscene excess. For all the wishful thinking implied by the title’s fantastical allusions, the wishes go unfulfilled: the magic carpet remains a painting, resolutely inanimate and attached to the wall, while the magic mirror reflects not fantasies, but people as they are, as grotesque and distorted as the circumstances that shaped them.