Compote 1935 - 1942

This is Michael Fenga's "Compote," with dimensions of about 45 by 36 centimeters. I wonder what year it was made. The artist coaxes a silvery light out of this ordinary object, a compote. You can almost hear the scratch of his pencil. There's a quietness here, the kind you get when someone really slows down to look. I wonder if Fenga was thinking about Chardin when he made this. There's a similar attention to the way light reveals form. Each little curve and facet gets its moment. It's like he's saying, "Even this simple thing is worthy of our attention." And maybe that's the whole point of art, isn't it? To make us stop and see the beauty in the everyday. It’s like a meditation, this act of drawing.