Giacometti à la coupole 1965

Theo Gerber’s painting, "Giacometti à la coupole," is a slippery landscape of the mind, made with oil on canvas. It's like a half-remembered dream, or a place you can almost recall. Gerber's palette, mostly grays and whites, creates this kind of ghostly atmosphere. The paint is applied in layers, sometimes thin and transparent, other times thicker, almost like a fog rolling in. Look at the dark smudge in the middle, is it a figure, or just a shadow? See how it sits just behind the table edge, solid and not solid all at once. You can feel the artist working, adding, subtracting, searching for something elusive. The painting reminds me of other artists preoccupied with haunting figures, like Giacometti, of course, or maybe even some of the later work of Philip Guston. Art is always talking to itself, borrowing, riffing, and messing around. There is no correct way to see it. Just keep looking, and let it talk to you.