Rudolf Nureyev 1969

Eugene Feldman made this print of Rudolf Nureyev and you can see it practically dance off the paper in earthy tones of peach, brown, and olive. I imagine Feldman working in a studio filled with light, pulling silkscreens, the ink thick and a little gloppy. This diptych gives you two views of the dancer. In the right panel, Nureyev looks up, mouth slightly open, as if waiting to be kissed or catching his breath after a long performance. And, in the left panel, the image is broken up, and we see the dancer in almost an x-ray, a ghostly apparition of his former self. Think about how Jasper Johns used to layer images on top of one another, so that the viewer could see the process of the painting itself. Feldman does the same here. These artists are in conversation with each other, across time, exchanging ideas about how to represent the body, so that we might also see the spirit.