Second Glass of Whisky 1992

Patrick Caulfield's "Second Glass of Whisky," a painting of no specific date, plays with the idea of seeing and not seeing. The heavy black ground feels almost sculptural, doesn’t it? It's built up with these thick, swirling marks that catch the light, pulling the picture forward. The whisky glass itself is rendered with a kind of loving attention, a little jewel amidst all this darkness. And what about those stark white shapes? They're not quite shadows, not quite light, but something in between. They sit on top of the black, sharp and declarative. This simple color palette, mostly black and white with the golden hue of the whisky, gives the painting an interesting tension. Caulfield's work here puts me in mind of Giorgio Morandi, another artist who found endless fascination in the ordinary. But where Morandi is all about quiet contemplation, Caulfield has a kind of pop sensibility, an awareness of how images circulate and how we make meaning from them. It leaves you to ponder what remains unspoken.