Pygmalion and Galatea 1989

Boris Vallejo painted Pygmalion and Galatea with oils, and the results are so smooth, it's almost unreal. He's not afraid of making paintings that look like paintings, though; you can see the brushstrokes in the way the light hits, which creates a lusciousness and volume to the figures. The artist embraces both the artificiality of the image and the materiality of the paint. The whole composition is rendered in fleshy, almost lurid colors, which reminds me that the real subject of the piece isn’t really beauty but the act of creation itself. Look at the way Galatea’s skin seems to glow with a light of its own, as if she’s both emerging from stone and radiating some kind of inner fire. Vallejo has captured something truly enigmatic. It’s this ambiguity, this layering of meaning, that makes art so compelling. Like a conversation that never really ends.