Easter 1984

Sergei Parajanov’s ‘Easter’ is a mixed media work, a kind of painted collage using paper, lace, and foil on board. You can almost feel Parajanov building this image up, layer by layer, finding its form through accretion and association. The gold ground shimmers, and this strange Christ figure emerges, almost ghost-like in its crude materiality. Look at how the paint on his face is so dry and chalky, and the way the beard is rendered, almost like a child's drawing. This is not about surface illusion, but about the surface as such. There’s such an amazing combination of materials here. The way he’s juxtaposed the delicacy of the lace with the harshness of the foil really speaks to a deep understanding of art making as a process of transformation. It reminds me of Kurt Schwitters' Merz collages, this playful approach to materiality.