1910
Oil on canvas
166 õ 124,5
The principle of comic reinterpretation, of turning traditions and stereotypes inside out lay at the basis of a new aesthetic which was declared by the artists of the Jack of Diamonds (“Bubnovy valet”) association. The image of the Beautiful Lady – the great Romantic theme of art in the past – is “brought down to Earth.”
The portrait of E.I. Kirkaldi is a parody in the form of an ornamental painted panel. The model looks like an inanimate statue with a painted face, as if “stuck through a hole cut in the carpet.” The figure dissolves against the patterned background. All the colours are raised to an intense level. In the painting there is an obvious keenness for “painting as such,” meaning richness and diversity of its possibilities, by the very process of painting. The portrait was created, to use the expression of the poet M.A. Voloshin, as a “self-satisfied thing, existing in itself and for itself.”
at 10, Krymsky Val, Hall 3
