Everybody’s Watching Me 1955

Robert Maguire painted this pulp fiction cover, “Everybody’s Watching Me,” and you can see his love of narrative and drama in every brushstroke. Look at the way he mixes colors right on the canvas, creating this slightly unreal, heightened effect. It’s all about the process, the energy of the moment. The paint here isn’t trying to hide anything. It’s thick in places, almost sculptural, and then thin and transparent in others, like around the woman’s face and the shadowy background. It’s like he's saying, "Here's the story, but here's also how I made it.” Check out the way the woman's hand is painted, it's like it's been rendered quickly, emphasizing the drama rather than the realism. Maguire reminds me a little of Willem de Kooning, the way he smudges and smears the paint. It’s this ongoing conversation about what painting can do, it’s an open-ended question rather than a definitive answer.