Facsimile painting from the temple of Mentuhotep II 2051 BC

This is a facsimile painting from the temple of Mentuhotep II, made by Charles K. Wilkinson. It’s basically a copy, but a copy made with love, and with a real understanding of the original. The ochres and tans are dabbed and dragged, and laid on in thin washes, kind of like watercolor but maybe gouache, which gives this image of a fragment a really earthy feel. The texture of the paper itself becomes part of the image, like the wall in the temple where the original was. I love how Wilkinson isn't trying to hide the process. The marks are right there, visible, almost like a diagram of how the thing was made. Look at the way the lower part of the figure is cropped by the edge. It feels so contemporary, like a Helen Frankenthaler stain painting. And it really underlines the fact that this is a fragment, a piece of something bigger, that someone felt compelled to document. Wilkinson's painting is a conversation across millennia, a back and forth between different ways of seeing. It’s not about getting it “right”, but about keeping the dialogue going.