Musicians 1946

Ossip Zadkine made this painting, Musicians, with gouache, and the way the gouache has been applied to the paper makes you feel like it’s less about precision and more about this fluid process of layering. I love the shapes that these two musicians are formed from. The layering of the cool blues and greys with warmer hues somehow expresses the essence of what it means to make music with other people. When you look at the musician on the right, the brushstrokes that form the shape of the cello are rendered as planes. They aren’t quite flat, but they create an interesting tactile surface. You feel the coolness of that grey, which makes the brown of the instrument resonate so beautifully. The painting reminds me of the work of Picasso and Braque. It’s a reminder that art is an ongoing conversation, and the beauty of that conversation lies in the fact that there are no definitive answers.