A cloud 1910

Konstantin Bogaevsky painted this strange landscape, called A Cloud, with oils, but when, we don't know. The forms are built up with loose layers of paint, a bit transparent, a bit opaque, like an underpainting but it’s the whole deal. Look at the upper-right corner of the canvas, where the dark blues and blacks of the sky melt into the yellowish cloud forms. There’s a feeling of constant transformation, of things emerging and dissolving. It feels a bit like Turner but with more going on underneath, darker and denser. The way he handles the paint reminds me of the landscapes of someone like Odilon Redon, where the physical world is just a jumping-off point for something more internal and dreamlike. It’s a reminder that art is always in conversation with itself, a back-and-forth across time and space. And that meanings in art are never fixed, they are always up for grabs.