Composition 1959

Curator: Well, that's certainly… something. My first thought is, like, the inside of a collapsing star, a sort of violent beauty. What am I looking at? Editor: This is "Composition" by Huguette Arthur Bertrand, created in 1959. Bertrand, a French artist, was working within the abstract expressionist movement. What you see here is oil on canvas, a medium allowing her to build up texture and layers of meaning. Curator: Layers is right. I see browns and golds almost battling with these harsh black lines. It feels very tense, doesn’t it? Like energy contained, maybe about to burst out. Editor: Abstract expressionism, as a movement, emerged post-World War II. It’s hard not to read that historical context into the work, you know? The anxiety, the rupture… there was a feeling of wanting to break free from the traditional constraints of art, of society even. To visualize raw emotion and experience on canvas. Curator: I buy that. Looking at it, I almost feel seasick, which sounds weird but, I guess that instability resonates with me. Did she intend that kind of reaction? Is it pure form and energy, or is there something more specific she’s trying to convey? Editor: Bertrand, like many artists of her time, sought to tap into the universal through abstraction. The lines, the colors, they’re not necessarily representative of anything in the external world. But they evoke feelings, moods, psychological states. Perhaps a sense of the tumultuous inner self or the uncertainties of the era. I see some echoes of that search reflected in the "street graffiti" style tags she experiments with on the canvas here. Curator: And that makes sense when I think that some may feel like street graffiti isn't necessarily always representing something exterior. Instead, acting as visual expression from an internal dialogue. You're right, that's powerful to bring in some expression and context behind the strokes. Even knowing now it was composed after a war. I felt anxiety and imbalance, like the start of something big coming. Maybe that's why art exists. What a great find, thanks for sharing Bertrand's piece! Editor: It invites us to think about what art does in moments of upheaval. Makes you appreciate how brave of a piece this must have felt for its own time!