Untitled 1961

This striking image by Vilen Barsky is made with paint, and probably some charcoal. It must have been an intuitive process, a push and pull between control and accident. Look at the way the bodies are rendered, how the heavy black lines pull them into focus against the red background. It’s all mood and gesture. I'm guessing Barsky was probably riffing off of other painters, like Munch, or maybe Paula Modersohn-Becker, all those great northern Europeans who laid it bare. I wonder what Barsky was thinking when he made this? Was he trying to work through something? It's a very ambiguous picture. The blue and white paint is applied with urgency; it conveys a lot of emotion, of searching. It's like a conversation between the artist and the canvas, each mark responding to the last. Paintings like this remind us that art is an ongoing experiment, one that invites us all to participate.