Corneille 1951

Tsuguharu Foujita made this scene of Corneille with paint of some kind, and ink, maybe. The artist’s got a loose, graphic touch, working tonally in some areas, more linear in others. It feels like a drawing that's been filled in. There's a kind of layering here; the walls of the buildings have these grey-white planes on top of a darker layer that peeps through the edges like an underpainting, or maybe it’s the texture of the support coming through. The artist is letting us see the bones of the painting. My eye is drawn to the 'Mortier' sign on the building on the right, the way it's cut off by the edge of the painting, and the off-kilter circle with the jumping figure inside. The way the artist has embraced the wonkiness feels very contemporary, like a nod to the artifice of picture making. You could compare this to the urban scenes of someone like Bonnard, who was working at a similar time in France. But where Bonnard is all light and impression, Foujita is all about the line. We see it, and then we keep seeing something new.