Les joies des autres 1960

Andre Lanskoy made "Les joies des autres" with oil paint, I'm guessing sometime mid-century. The shapes are laid on with juicy strokes of paint, sometimes thick, sometimes thin, letting the process show. Up close, you can see how the pinks and blues meet—a real push-pull that gives the whole thing a kind of vibrating energy. It’s like he’s not just painting a scene, but making a world out of color and texture. The surface is alive, each stroke a little decision, a little feeling made visible. I like how nothing quite resolves, it's all sensation. Looking at Lanskoy's painting makes me think of Joan Mitchell; both artists build these amazing abstract worlds with color, but where Mitchell is all about gesture and movement, Lanskoy is more about building up these little pockets of joy. It's this constant conversation, this back and forth between artists that keeps things interesting. And, ultimately, it’s up to us to keep the conversation going, to find our own meaning in these beautiful, ambiguous forms.