Objet subjectivité 1957

Victor Brauner painted "Objet subjectivité" sometime around 1957. The tan background feels like a raw canvas, with these darker marks, like constellations of chance encounters, making you wonder about the way Brauner approached the canvas. The composition of a head and shoulders is almost symmetrical, but slightly off. If you look closely, you can see the texture is a little rough, and the tones are muted. It's like Brauner is pushing against the slickness of oil paint. I love that Brauner isn’t trying to hide the labor or the materiality of the work. Those little red lips are almost comical against the rest of the tones, like a little burst of vitality. The colors and textures give the piece a real emotional weight. Brauner’s work has this kind of outsider rawness. It reminds me a bit of Guston, who, like Brauner, wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable and weird. Art is always a conversation, echoing and riffing off each other, and it's never just one thing.