The Pan Pan at the Monico 1959

Gino Severini made "The Pan Pan at the Monico," which hangs here at the Pompidou Center in Paris. The painting has a really cool faceted, gem-like quality. It is like the artist chopped up the world and put it back together in a really interesting way, like a disco ball made of bodies. Look at how he builds up the surface with these tiny planes of color. There’s hardly any impasto - it’s more about the relationships between the colours that make it feel rich and deep. This is because color for the Futurists was a way to express movement and speed, to capture the feeling of modernity. Check out the way he renders the dancers' limbs, almost like fractured glass. It all seems like it’s about the energy and chaos of the modern world, but then you remember that Severini was also interested in traditional art. It makes you wonder what he was trying to do in his own way. Like Picasso, he found a way to say things that hadn't been said before.