Pasiphaë Through the Eyes of the Modern Era and Average Sodomising Moment 1994

Lubo Kristek's ‘Pasiphaë Through the Eyes of the Modern Era and Average Sodomising Moment’ feels like a fever dream rendered in watercolor and ink. You can see where Kristek was really working through something intense. I imagine him hunched over the paper, letting the images pour out, one after the other. The woman, the bull—it's all so charged. I bet he didn't quite know what it was going to be when he started. That contrast between the delicate washes of color and the dark, almost violent, outlines really gets to me. There's a push and pull, like he's trying to contain the chaos within a fragile form. It's not unlike Goya’s darker works or maybe even some of Francis Bacon’s more disturbing pieces—that sense of humanity pushed to its absolute limit. Artists have always been drawn to those edges. It’s where the real stuff happens, isn't it?