Vallotton depicts spaces that appear warm and cozy-but for the elusive, almost furtive figures that inhabit them. His wonderful, flat domestic scenes, such as The Red Room and The Visit, are painted with the same clinical detachment seen in the work of Edward Hopper. The sitters in his portraits, such as Gertrude Stein, appear somehow ill at ease-as if, rather than having their likeness painted, they were being cross-examined by an attorney, or interviewed by a court-appointed psychologist. Nothing is quite comfortable in the paintings of Vallotton’s mature period. The subtitle of the exhibition at the Met-which was first presented this summer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London-is Painter of Disquiet.
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