Still Life with Skull 1927

Arshile Gorky painted this oil on canvas, titled "Still Life with Skull," sometime before his death in 1948. It’s a work that encapsulates the anxieties of its time. The skull, a traditional memento mori, is set against an ambiguous space, rendered in muted tones and fragmented forms. This reflects a world reeling from the devastation of World War II, a world where traditional values were crumbling, and the future was uncertain. Gorky, an Armenian immigrant who had witnessed the horrors of genocide, was acutely aware of the fragility of life. His embrace of abstraction, influenced by European modernism, suggests a rejection of the old order and a search for new ways to represent a world transformed by violence and displacement. To fully appreciate Gorky’s work, one might look to period journals, letters, and the records of galleries that exhibited his work. Only through understanding these historical contexts can we truly grasp the meaning of art.