Blessed Love

#81001     130 x 95 cm     ac

Jan van Eyck: “Arnolfini Marriage”, 1434. national Gallery, London
Picasso: “The Sculptor’s Studio”, 1933, etching.

The portrait by Jan Van Eyck (1390-1441) of “Giocanni Arnolfini and His Wife” is one of the Flemish painter’s masterpieces. In the foreground, the couple stands as a solemn silhouette holding extended mirrors, and other furnishings of the period.Chen has effaced this background to bring the couple to the last of the twentieth century. In placing the figures behind vertical, horizontal, and diagonal grilles Chen brilliantly creates a moire effect, an optical illusion of a sensation of movement over which the viewer has no control because the eye cannot readily differentiate close-up microzones. This makes the figures move and flicker like an old newsreel.The cavorting mare and stallion from Picasso’s etching suggest that the nobleman and his pregnant spouse, before being subjected to the grilles, were too prim and reserved. Or the animals symbolize what went on behind closed doors. (by Lawrance Jeppson)