Figurative Portrait Painting on a Gallery Wall, Europe

5 October 2017 · Paris

A large-scale figurative portrait hangs recessed into a white gallery wall, its double frame — black inner, white outer — giving it the weight of an institution rather than a room. The painting itself is unmistakably rooted in New Objectivity: a woman in a red-and-black checked dress sits at a marble bistro table, a cigarette trailing smoke, a cocktail glass and open jewellery box beside her. The pink ground behind her is warm and slightly unnerving. The subject's exaggerated features — dark-ringed eyes, parted lips — push the portrait toward caricature without releasing it from portraiture. Detailed naturalism and deliberate distortion held in one image.