Venus Birth 1910

Konstantin Egorovich Makovsky painted this Venus using oil on canvas, and the smoothness, the near invisibility of brushwork, seems central to the image. The pale skin and shell contrast with a dark, indeterminate background, a stage set against which the artist explores the idealised female form. It's all about surface, the way light reflects off the body and the shell. This isn't so much about touch, as about the way vision can make things glow and shimmer. Look at the way Makovsky carefully models Venus's body. Here, painting becomes about the gaze, a way of possessing the world through the act of looking. Makovsky's work feels very much connected to French Academic painting - I'm thinking of someone like Bouguereau - but with an added hint of sensuality that is all his own. It reminds us that art is never created in a vacuum but exists as a continuous exchange of ideas and influences.