Meat Grinder c. 1939

This is Geoffrey Holt’s, ‘Meat Grinder’, a watercolor of indeterminate date. The rendering is highly specific, almost diagrammatic, but also rather odd, not quite fitting into a recognizable genre. The drawing is very dry, very descriptive, very clear, with no visible smudging or blending. I find myself drawn to the slightly crude way the wooden parts of the structure are described. See how each is built up with small hatched strokes, almost like the cross-section of a tree. It reminds me that an artwork is always a kind of diagram, a coded representation of reality. And the colors? A monochromatic wash of brown and grey. A muted color scheme gives the impression that it’s been bleached of all emotion. I keep thinking, who was Geoffrey Holt? I’m reminded of some of Alfred Jenson’s diagrams, except without any of the obsessive color. It’s interesting to see how this piece lives in the space between art and something else, maybe outsider art or technical illustration. I think it shows how, in art, the process of description can also be a form of interpretation.