Nude with Red Model Airplane 1988

Philip Pearlstein made this puzzling painting, Nude with Red Model Airplane, with oil paint and, I imagine, a fair amount of careful looking. Isn't it odd? I can imagine Pearlstein in his studio, puzzling over how to arrange these disparate elements - a nude, an airplane, and a patterned rug - into a single, coherent composition. What to put in the foreground? The background? How to make it all fit? The paint is applied in a relatively smooth, even manner, which only adds to the painting's sense of detachment. There’s the sense that he’s set himself this problem. The arbitrary combination of objects makes it into a puzzle. The eye has to jump around, it’s made of a bunch of different views or points. It reminds me a bit of other painters like Fairfield Porter who were trying to grapple with realism in a post-abstract expressionist world. There is a conversation happening here about how we see and represent the world. Painting is never neutral, is it? It's always a kind of argument.