Untitled 1996

Arsen Savadov made this painting of two dancers, and what strikes me is the earthy palette he’s chosen, all browns and creams, layered like sediment. I imagine he started by blocking in the main shapes, then scraping back, adding more, letting the figures emerge. I'm drawn to the way he's rendered their arms, all that gorgeous impasto; the way the light hits them, the visible brushstrokes, it's almost like he's sculpting with paint. It reminds me of Degas, of course, but also something more visceral, more immediate. You can almost feel the dancers’ physicality, the effort and grace in their movements. I wonder what he was thinking as he made this painting. What’s incredible is how the brown horizontal lines of the floor both separates and unites the two figures. I think back to Courbet and Manet, and the way they used the physicality of paint to say something new about the world. Savadov is part of that lineage, these artists are all talking to each other, across time. That is the beauty of painting.