Pink Slip

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on December 6, 2012 at 8:45am

Curator’s Comment:  

 

Pink Slip is an intriguingly familiar image.  I think it reminds me of a German Expressionist piece by Kirchner or Nolde.  The twisting pose of the coquettish female figure holds my interest as she simultaneously turns away from the viewer, and pushing towards the front of the picture plane.  Her head demurs downward, but there is a coy attitude in her provocative posture and dress.  I like how the patterning of the cloth activates the space in a dynamic manner, but doesn’t detract from the overall gesture and emotion.  The little pink stripes/cuts in the pattern seem to fall from her deep pink dress.  The pink slip could refer to her clothing, or to the paper she loosely grasps.  If the latter, the piece could be saying something about unemployment, but the mood isn’t for me an appropriately contemporary scene to depict such a circumstance.  (Surely unemployment is an age old predicament, but pink slips have a ring of our present time.)  The background’s soft modulations in warm hues suspend her in the space, but don’t provide anchoring ground.  The vertical orange drape is also a strong compositional element.  While it balances the visual weight of the left half the figure occupies, it also physiologically serves as an impending barrier designed to veil or cloak the figure, just as it dissolves into the bottom of the canvas.