Woodcutters 1959

Ivan Generalic made this painting, Woodcutters, with oil on glass - isn't that wild? The figures have a kind of flattened appearance, and the color palette is constrained. It’s really a world of blues, whites, and grays, isn't it? This isn't a slick surface we’re looking at. There’s a strange tension between the smoothness of the glass and the way the paint seems built up in layers. Look at the trees, how their branches are rendered with a delicate touch. Then compare this to the peacock’s tail, an explosion of blue that feels almost collaged onto the scene. I wonder, looking at the figures perched in the trees, so white, so still, if they are angels? Generalic’s work reminds me a bit of Rousseau’s, that same insistence on flattening perspective and conjuring a world that’s both familiar and utterly strange. There's an invitation here to let go of our need for fixed meanings and embrace the painting's ambiguity.