Self-portrait in red 1921

Zinaida Serebriakova gave us this self-portrait in red. What gets me is the way Serebriakova works the surface, the slightly scrubby quality of the paint. The layers are built up, not so much to create an illusion, but to make a space for her to sit within. Take the right hand that holds the brush; see how it emerges from a series of loose marks, a dark ground over painted with highlights. We have all the information we need to know it is a hand, but it doesn’t look like one in any conventional sense, more like an accumulation of experience, a history of looking. It reminds me a little of Paula Modersohn-Becker, another figurative painter who understood that representation is only ever a series of marks, a kind of code or suggestion. It is the viewers role to bring the image to life, to complete the conversation.