Augustine Roulin With Her Milk Son 2012

Curator: Today, we are looking at "Augustine Roulin With Her Milk Son," an oil painting created in 2012 by Alexander Roitburd. The painting contains characteristics of Naive Art and surrealism. Editor: What strikes me immediately is its odd arrangement. It feels unbalanced, dreamlike, and unsettling all at once. The brushwork is very textured, lending an almost palpable sense of weight. Curator: Absolutely. Roitburd was deeply invested in questioning and subverting the existing political system. The way he mixes portraiture with still-life elements, imbuing the work with aspects of narrative art is quite subversive, almost like visual protest. It goes against established traditions, and I think this challenges us to reassess how we see representations of maternity, gender, and social roles within such political contexts. Editor: And the colors! It is grounded in these deep, muted browns and greens that contrast dramatically with these pops of red – in her heels, the strange plume. There’s tension created by these coloristic contrasts alone. How does that fit into its social commentary? Curator: Well, in works like this, Roitburd critiqued established symbols of power, reflecting the social instability that was pervasive at the time in the Ukraine. It can feel anarchistic. But notice how even this element coexists with, for instance, this odd arrangement of candles affixed to the back of the maternal figure, and then juxtaposed with what could be an industrial device dispensing something red at the top-right of the canvas. He prompts viewers to scrutinize societal and cultural values embedded in our reality. Editor: It is as though each of those isolated symbols creates this fragmented syntax—or anti-syntax even. I leave the work feeling bewildered and somehow intrigued, as though deciphering a puzzle whose picture continues to morph with each attempt. Curator: Precisely. The picture leaves you questioning long after you've stopped looking. The context Roitburd was engaged with was clearly quite active in Ukrainian visual culture, and has spurred considerable discussion in art-critical circles since then, to this day.