After Picasso

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on December 18, 2012 at 9:16am

Curator’s Comment:  

 

After Picasso is a seductively funny image.  The lush color and sharp value contrast lures the viewer into the fabricated environment, where we are to discern between fully dimensional objects and a flatter, albeit painterly background.  The expressive shapes and marks hold up well against the centrally placed still life, which takes on figurative representation.  Assuming, like Picasso, the ripe green fruit denotes breasts and the vessel form stands in for a human torso.  We are confronted with organic objects confined within an artificial form- and offered to us wholly on a precariously stacked container and plate. The apples at the base of the simply constructed arrangement compound the tilted, bilateral symmetry.  I especially enjoy how the black painted round shapes in the background seem to fall and move down towards the apples, affecting the circular motion throughout the photograph.  I also take pleasure in the similar mix of actual items and painted ground in Still Life, Blackish and Whitish. The fully achromatic piece makes up for the lack of color in the expressive mark making and delicate juxtaposition of white flowers.  I’m curious about the small spheres at the base of the floral vase- perhaps the “x” and “y” refer to male chromosomal pairings?  Whether or not gender is specifically summoned in these auxiliary trappings, the piece successfully brings about a union of opposites; fragility versus confidence, flat versus plastic space, openness versus containment, textural variation, etc. It’s curious that a photographic image could effectively say so much about the history of painting.