Red head, blue body 1936

Meret Oppenheim painted "Red head, blue body" with oil on canvas, and it’s a trip. The surface is smooth, but not too smooth, you can still see some of the canvas texture underneath, which feels very frank and matter-of-fact. The paint isn’t overworked, but you can feel the attention that has been placed on this juxtaposition of colour. Look at the way the red circle, the "head", hovers above the blue form. It’s connected by these thin lines. Like it’s floating, or being held aloft. I wonder if the red shape, the head, contains a sort of industrial or mechanical element. Are we supposed to think of it as a kind of toy, or a thing being tested in a lab. It reminds me of Léger, who was also interested in bringing together clean shapes with organic or bodily forms. Ultimately, it’s about the back-and-forth of ideas, the conversations that artists have with each other, across time and space, that makes art so engaging. The magic is in the translation, the way each artist takes something and makes it their own.