A French Professor 

Curator: This charming portrait, known as "A French Professor", is by Sanyu. The artwork seems to capture more than just a likeness. Editor: Absolutely. Immediately, the exaggerated features strike me. It has this almost whimsical, yet slightly cynical air about it, don’t you think? Curator: It's the economy of line, isn’t it? Sanyu’s ink and watercolor work beautifully together, there is such fluidity of brushstroke but great definition of the image. It has echoes of traditional Oriental art practices combined with more Westernized portraiture. Editor: Indeed! Look how deliberately the artist omits detail, leaving outlines, a suggestion of light. Consider the way that form creates tonal contrast. It calls into question the idea of representing "reality". The work's structural components guide us into the professor's mental life. Curator: His choice to have the professor posed cross-legged, intently drawing on a pad...It makes you wonder what fills his thoughts at this very moment. He isn’t static. It's that quiet moment, when everything disappears, except for the subject and page, the internal and the external coming together. Editor: And that downward gaze really draws our eye down along the plane of the professor’s form. I wonder about the intended effect of that heavy, gray coloring though— perhaps signaling the professor's age or experience. Curator: Maybe a combination of that gravitas and the lightness of that inner experience he is in, being at once professorial, but intensely creative and absorbed. It suggests how layered all of us really are. Editor: In essence, the interplay between representation and abstraction turns an observational study into a moment of deep engagement with the self. Food for thought!