Faces

Among the art and photographic images I’ve been collecting online, I’ve run across a number of arresting portraits, mostly by artists new to me. I will write last of the collage that heads the post, as I want to note two others first.

A Teapot, Heads of Garlic, and Old Shoes

One of the things I enjoy doing these days is wandering through galleries at the Metropolitan Museum. Before I go, I scope out a painting or two (or three) that I want to make sure and see. Inevitably, and also delightfully, I end up standing in front of one I’d not seen before, like Gaughin’s Still Life with Teapot and Fruit (1896), or revisiting one of the many pairs of shoes van Gogh painted that I’d forgotten was at the Met.

Melon and Lemon, Quince and Marguerite

Gaughin had many talents, as we know. I was, however, completely unaware of his talent for still life—until I ran across Melon and Lemon (c. 1900), in which he shows us what makes a lemon such a magnificent object to depict. So, of course, I had to make a collage (actually two) of this painting. Above, you’ll find the lemon and melon superimposed on Tamara Lempicka’s Abstract Composition (1960).