Farewell, Comrade—The End of the Cold War (central panel of a triptych) 1992

Ralph Fasanella made this painting about the end of the Cold War with bright colors, and a flat, almost cartoon-like style. You get the sense that artmaking was for him a way to process information, to make sense of the world. The surface is so packed with detail it’s overwhelming, like trying to absorb a whole newspaper at once. Look at the way he renders the crowd, each face a simple dot of paint, and then your eyes are drawn to the headline, "Farewell, Comrade". The words sit on top of the red flag, a stark symbol of the fallen Soviet Union. The paint is applied in a way that feels immediate and direct, the opposite of trying to create an illusion. Fasanella’s style reminds me of Philip Guston, another artist who embraced a more accessible style in his later work, turning away from the high seriousness of abstract expressionism towards a more direct, figurative style. Both artists remind us that art is a language, always evolving and always open to new ways of seeing and thinking.