Photo By Gail
William Baziotes (1912 – 1963) embraced the Symbolist concept of “correspondences”– poetic analogies in which a single form can suggest multiple references. Also influenced by the surrealist works of Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro, Baziotes painted semi-abstract images with legible though ambiguous forms, like those found in Figure on a Tightrope (1947). In the year that he made this painting. Baziotes explained his process, “Each beginning suggests something. Once I sense the suggestion, I begin to paint intuitively. The [intuitive] suggestion then becomes a phantom that must be caught and made real.”
Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
Photo By Gail
Like the Surrealists he admired, and his fellow Abstract Expressionists, William Baziotes (1912 – 1963) was fascinated by the power of myth. Here, the title The Flesh Eaters (1952) and its imagery suggest the story of the Cyclops, the one-eyed giant who devoured Odysseus’s sailors in Homer’s epic poem. In this ambitious work, Baziotes applied layer upon layer of oil paint and rubbed it into the canvas to create a shimmering, opalescent surface that evokes an underwater world inhabited by undulating, biomorphic forms. Characteristically, the artist combined menacing forms with luminous colors to create a paradoxical work that is both repulsive and compelling.
Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
Bringing You The Best Of Art, Design, Pop Culture and Lifestyle Since 2004!
