Mädchen im Glas 1902

Leo Putz made this painting called Mädchen im Glas – that’s German for Girl in a Glass – and it's like a nude figure study, but with this funny twist. Imagine Putz, trying to figure out how to fit a person into a glass, maybe he thought of it as a kind of joke? The paint is thick, you can almost feel him layering blues and whites to get that watery, glassy look. The surface is scrubby and soft. There are fleshy tones, and then there's the frame he’s painted around it, with all those juicy grapes and leaves. They seem about to burst, like the woman is about to burst out of her glass, there is an erotic playfulness in the relationship between the painted frame and the woman inside. It reminds me a little of Klimt, of course, but it’s also a little bit silly, a bit like those early modern painters experimenting and trying to figure out what painting can really do. Artists talking to each other across time, across countries, having this ongoing conversation. It’s great, right?