Cigar Store Figure c. 1937

Walter Hochstrasser made this drawing, Cigar Store Figure, on paper, but we don't know exactly when. It is quite a formal drawing, almost academic, but somehow it's still very strange. Look closely at the way he's rendered the form, how the light catches the curves and folds of the figure’s clothing. The colors are so saturated, it almost feels like the figure is lit from within, like a cartoon, or something from the hand-painted billboards of the early twentieth century. I particularly like the way that the figure has an odd kind of sheen, it's almost like the artist is showing off all the rendering techniques that he knows, but in an awkward and uncanny way. It reminds me of some of Alex Katz’s paintings from the 1960's, in the way that the figure seems to exist in an ambiguous relationship with its background. Ultimately the image is less about the thing itself and more about the act of painting.