Enigma#73008 42 X 29″ mmp
Here Chen again combines a male figure, Plato, from Raphael’s “School of Athens”, with an inflated neoclassical Picasso woman. In contrast to Aristotle, whose gesture is towards practical, down-to-earth science, Plato’s gesture is heavenward, not to God but to the ethereal truths of philosophy.This was one of the first paintings done in a manner that has become Chen’s Neo-iconography. Here he realized that a combination of figures gathered from disparate sources becomes a new painting. This combination itself is the actual subject of the painting. The harlequin floor, Goya’s dog, William Tell’s apple, and the menacing glare of Picasso spying through a window are all compositional elements before being philosophical. In “Lamentation” and “Enigma” Chen largely had only one black and white illustration of his original sources. So he was not coerced by anyone else’s ideas of color but was free to work out his own color dynamics, which have much to do with the beauty, cohesiveness, and power of all his paintings.
– Lawrance Jeppson |
Enigma
Target
2015 年 7 月 28 日