Clown 1939

Cyprián Majerník made this painting of a clown, probably in oil, sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. Look at these brushstrokes! See how they define the face with big swooping gestures. I can just imagine Majerník in his studio, trying to capture the bittersweet essence of this figure. It’s not just a portrait; it’s like he’s trying to get at something deeper, something about sadness, about performance, maybe even about the artist's own feelings. The paint isn’t thin here, it's applied with decisive marks that model the form and give it weight. The browns and ochres create such a melancholy mood! And those clown tears, like little rivers, I think Majerník is saying something about how art can hold contradictory feelings at once. It’s like he’s in conversation with all those other artists who have tried to wrestle big feelings onto the canvas. Painting is an act of embodying feelings and an attempt to catch something, or at least feel it out, even if it remains ambiguous, for both the artist and the viewer.