Harlequin and Pierrot 1924

André Derain painted 'Harlequin and Pierrot' with oils, sometime in the first half of the 20th century. The palette is pretty muted, but the marks, especially in the Harlequin's costume, have a kind of insistent rhythm. It feels like Derain is laying down each lozenge shape one by one, like building with blocks. You can really feel the materiality of the paint here, especially in the Pierrot's costume, where the white is built up in thick impasto. This is juxtaposed with a much thinner application of paint in the background. The Harlequin's costume is a riot of color, but if you look closely, you can see that each lozenge is made up of many different colors. It's almost as if he's trying to capture the way light refracts off of different surfaces. Derain seems to be in conversation with artists like Picasso and Braque, but also with earlier painters like Courbet, who were interested in capturing the physicality of the world through paint. There's a sense of searching here, a trying-out of different ways of seeing and representing the world. And that's what makes it so exciting to look at, I think.