Glimpse of a Glimpse
Posted on October 7th, 2007 in musings
Sketchbook spread, probably from several months ago. I like it; it’s a “nice” drawing. Formally, it is complicit with a quaint history of painting and drawing: a subtle shift in material, an acknowledgment of the frame of the page, a fragmentation of illusionistic space in service of pictorial space, the dramatic (ha!) tension between abstraction and representation. It depicts a homeless man sitting on a sidewalk against a health club in downtown Philadelphia. (Mystification: Perhaps the visual weight of the blankness of the page compresses the figure against the edge of the page, some wonderfully composed comment on the forces of socio-economic inequality and neoliberal tyranny (maybe mental illness) that conscript a person to a life on the streets.) There is so much that is not evident, so much remains untold. But it’s just a quickly made drawing in a sketchbook. What should we expect? A visual exegesis on the epidemic of poverty and homelessness in Philadelphia?
I like it; it’s a “nice” drawing.
