Blue Eclipse 1955

Curator: Albert Bloch's oil painting, "Blue Eclipse", completed in 1955, presents a fascinating composition combining figuration with a landscape. What's your first take on this one? Editor: There's a peculiar unease. A dream, maybe slightly off-kilter. Are those harlequins? They seem suspended between a pastoral scene and something far more... spectral. Curator: Spectral is a great word. Considering Bloch's involvement with the Expressionist movement, the materiality seems crucial here. Look at the visible brushstrokes, the impasto, layering the oil paints so thickly. It's not just depicting a scene, but constructing a psychological space. What's particularly striking is how these material choices work in concert with the subject matter – are these performers wandering through this night scene or are they trapped within its surface? Editor: I’m also caught by the figures, particularly that chap with what looks like an elongated mask and his strange flute. Their otherworldliness is beautifully counterpointed by the earthy textures of the paint itself – like spectres made from the very stuff of the earth. Curator: Exactly. The application of the paint itself becomes part of the narrative. Bloch uses genre-painting as a jumping off point to comment on something bigger than simply this time of day. What do you think about that ambiguous sky? Editor: Ooh, it really tickles something in me! Is it day or night? It doesn't resolve itself and that uncertainty feeds back into the rest of the painting. That single, small dwelling far away offers safety but maybe too far away for our protagonists? Is it too corny to say that those orbs could be symbols of hope? Or of an indifferent universe? Curator: Maybe both. The beauty of art is how the reception of the context changes its meaning to reflect the period in which it is being reviewed. As well as it's reflection on the painter in relation to society, the work of creation is intertwined and the Expressionist period encapsulates that well. It is beautiful how the oil and application captures those feelings for me personally. Editor: I know what you mean! For me this artwork has certainly become an exploration of hope and alienation under an eternal, silent witness of the moons.