Anagogy 1947

Victor Brauner made this painting called ‘Anagogy’ with oil on board. The white ground is scrubby, lending a kind of dreamlike and primitive feel to the piece. It's this sort of see-through ground where you can see all the mess and history. The paint application feels really intuitive, almost like Brauner was feeling his way through the image. Look at the top figure’s head—it's this graphic sunburst, each ray a different color, like he's mapping out energy or thought. The body is angular with odd geometric shapes. Then there’s the bird; is it a bird? It seems to be morphing into a human head. There’s a funny sense of balance and imbalance, like the painting is about to tip over. Brauner is creating an image, but he's also mapping a journey, a transformation, a dialogue between the human and the animal, the conscious and the unconscious. I am reminded of the work of Philip Guston who used a similar kind of approach to image-making. I find it really compelling, how a painting can hold so many possibilities, so many different ways of seeing.