Studio

An old man standing strark naked in front of us. The art world has seen infinite number of nude paintings, although predominantly it has been women nudes, we as observers have been used to watching nudes, and analysing nudes unfazed. Take Olympia for example, as a woman writer myself, it was easy for me talk about her, but something about this particular nude is offsetting. The primary reason is that he is not a young woman like Olympia, he is not young, his skin sagging in his cheeks, breasts, abdomen, lower thighs. Objectively, if I were a heartless person, that is what is off about the painting, that he does not have the body good enough to stare at. Creepy, but true.

But if we open our heart to it, which he makes us do, by adding elements to which we can distract our attention to — real elements of his studio to make us stay longer. The skylight lets a bright summer day pour natural light over the room, and it must be where seasons passed under his watch — literally over his watch, and figuratively too. Some of the moments while the seasons passed were valuable, some wasted, and both existing together is the normalcy in life.

Then the wooden drawer-stand, holding a full roll of masking tape, untouched beside an 80 year old naked man. Is he suggesting that he has embraced every flaw without having to mask it? Or did he not need to hold anything, or anybody together? I see it as a symbol of embracing errors and melancholy that follows it. To the right, a white screen and a wooden pillar stand like a blank page, quietly insisting that whatever life remains should still be spent making something. He constantly subjected himself to do so, he created uncanny aura around the geometry in his paintings. It eventually created a movement called magic realism.

And now, when looking at him, not as a subject that we frown and move away from, but as a mirror. The unsettling image was not the man. He may have painted the most stark version himself, but by doing so he has shown us the stark, undeniable version of ourselves. It bares veritable honesty, between him as an artist who is brave enough to present himself to trigger the suffocation he feels while he reviews himself as a human being, and the observer who is constantly examining him and his work with what he paints. This painting is the liberation of an artist. To release the suffocating self, but showing his audience their suppressed self.

In many self portraits, props, dress, accessories, and man made light play a major role in narrating the art, in turn the artist. He is wearing nothing here, giving us enough scope to look into ourselves. He is unapologetic about aging, rather the only thing he is embracing is time. His watch is the only accessory that he is wearing. It is him admitting to himself and reminding his observers how transient life is, and how eternal a product created by a person is. Because the dial of the watch is immaculate white. Time is not a real phenomenon. It is how one perceives it. But it exists, it passes, and can not be reversed. And he has walked through the entire path to explain it in an empty dial.

His face does not carry the arrogance of a man, or carries the peace of a man who lived well. It carries no pain, no happiness. The natural lighting was intended to hide the hooded sunk eyes under his forehead, and he ensured his face was like a clean slate. Just so we only see what we are.

He normalises the awaiting end of life. The scar from his chest, suggesting a surgery. And a circular mark on his left chest hinting the possibility of it being a pacemaker, says that as a human he is aware that he is now alive not because of natural reasons. He is aware of the machine made armor he is holding onto, he is neither proud nor not proud about it.

Studio is a painting reminding the mankind that life is nothing but what we perceive of it, and that there could be an end anytime soon, and if one is lucky they get to live a grace time while carrying this awareness out of experience. And as a person who got his grace time, he screams to my face, 'Go Live!'