MARGUERITE ZORACH

Zorach went against the grain every opportunity she could. Born into a well-to-do California, she escaped to Paris as a teenager to stay with a bohemian aunt and found herself at the centre of a new avant-garde movement that was equally enamoured with her as she was with it. She rejected traditional, academic education and even shunned orthodox art school, instead studying a post-impressionist school that allowed her to develop a unique style with little regard for tradition or societal aesthetic norms. It was there that she met her husband William, who was so beguiled by her art that it extended to her. ‘I just couldn't understand why such a nice girl would paint such wild pictures.’, he later said. Her journey back to America took her through her through Egypt, Palestine, India, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Korea, and Japan over the course of seven months, and her exposure to multiple worlds is abundantly clear in this painting. The flat planes speak to traditional Japanese art, while the landscape has hints of India, and the figures are distinctly of the Matisse school. She synthesised place and style into a unique voice that drowned out all others. 

PABLO PICASSO

A portrait of love and deception, Picasso’s ‘The Red Armchair’ features his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter as its sole subject. Part of a series of portraits of her, and in each one her physical form takes on the workings of his mind, distorted and changed to become indicative of his emotions and feelings towards not just her but their relationship in general. She is a vessel for Picasso, and he removes her autonomy in his representations, treating her instead as an extension of himself. Here, he takes the foundations of the Cubist philosophy he developed but applies the work of multiple perspective not to still lives but to a human for nearly the first time. It is fitting that the first subject he painted in this was Walter. Her face is shown in duality, both in profile and front-on so that she becomes an embodiment of the double life that Picasso has been living during their affair. She energised the artist, brought an intensity in his colour and form and marked a significant turning point in his development. In this way, we can read her double face as exemplary of a turning point in Picasso, a move from looking one way to seeing things in a whole new light. 

CARAVAGGIO

A masterpiece of falling action, the painting moves from hysteria to calm as Christ’s body is lowered. Mary of Cleophas, in the top right, gestures in desperation towards heaven, her upwards eyes filled with longing. Below her, Mary Magdalene’s open palm faces towards Christ, as if pushing him to his resting place and, at the bottom left, Christ’s limp hand touches the burial stone upon which he will be placed. For all of it aesthetic beauty, representational splendour and allegorical brilliance, perhaps most remarkable is that Caravaggio tells the story of Jesus Christ in hand placement alone - mankind comes into contact with heaven, and God comes to touch the earth. This was the altarpiece of a chapel, and each day the priest would offer sacrament in front of it. This action, raising the body and blood of christ upwards, served as a perfect mirror to the entombment happening behind him, imbuing the work and the story with new life and relevance as long as it remains on view.