Sailing In Liberty

#86030     36″ X 48″     oc

▪ Signac: “Le Port de St. Tropez”. Musee de l’Annonciade, St. Tropez.

In one omnipotent abracadabra Chen moves Paul Signac’s entire fleet of sailing pleasure boats from the harbor of St. Tropez to waters between Liberty island and Manhattan, where they participate in the Statute of Liberty Centennial Celebration. The Liberty Lady in the foreground and the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the back leave no doubt as to the location.

Signac (1863-1945) was one of the founders of the Society of Independent Artists, where he met Georges Seurat (1859-1891), whose lead he followed in the creation of Pointillism. Francoise Cachin wrote of him, “….. by his religion of color he was able to play a role alongside the Fauves; by his asceticism, alongside the Cubists; by his effort of rational analysis, alongside Matisse; and by the will power of his style, his detachment from nature, and his obsessions with pure paint and color, alongside Delaunay and Kandinsky, the father of abstraction.”

Chen has given the entire painting a Divisionist (pointillist) treatment: the medium becoming icon and part of the message.

– Lawrance Jeppson