CHAÏM SOUTINE

Pain, anguish, and poverty seem to materialise in tortured hands. The flesh and bones distort, fracture, expand, and contract in painful brushstrokes and Soutine, in his depiction of 10 digits, fills them with enough emotion to last a lifetime. Painted in the inter-war years, it depicts an unknown subject - normal for Soutine who rarely depicted anyone he had a personal connection with – whose anonymity does not dampen the psychological intensity of the work. Abstract in its colours and style yet traditional in subject, it never shies away from a seeming revulsion to flesh, creating a caricature of humanity that feels at once absurd and sharply observed. Soutine lived in abject poverty nearly all of his life, often forgoing food in favour of art supplies and channelling his literal hunger into inspiration and drive. The titular women in blue is a stand-in for Soutine himself, her pain is his, their shared lives built upon both universal hardship and the beautiful longing for more that accompanies it.

DIRCK VAN BABUREN

Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to the mortals. In some versions of the story, it was he who crafted humans from clay and used the fire to imbue them with life, in others the fire was merely a tool to allow them to create civilisation. Yet in all tellings, the ending if the same; the great Titan Prometheus is bound to rock by the blacksmith God Vulcan, god of fire, volcanoes and deserts, and for eternity has his liver consumed by an eagle. It is one of many stories from the ancient world that artists of the Baroque drew their stories from yet is devoid of so much of the romance more commonly seen in the movement. Van Baburen’s depiction borrows heavily from the work of Renaissance artists before him, adapting Caravaggio’s depiction of St. Paul to become his Prometheus most notably. Yet for all the obvious influences, van Barburen brings new light to an ancient story and find the humanity, the religion and the beauty in myth.

EL GRECO

An angry Christ drove the moneychangers out of the Temple, flipping their tables in disgust at the heresy they showed. Though one of the most common contemporary stories from the New Testament, it was not a popular theme of painting for most of the Renaissance, presenting a side of Christ that seemed counter to the beauty and divinity so much of the work strove for. Yet El Greco returned to this subject multiple times throughout his career, and at the turn of the 1600s, it began to take on radically new meaning. As Protestantism began to rise across Europe, the Catholic Church saw this story as an analogy for their attempt to purify themselves from the scourge of this new religion. Protestantism was, for them, the heresy to true Christianity, and Christ driving the moneychangers out was inspiration for them to keep the Catholic faith pure and alive.