The Gothic XI 1991

Judith Rothschild made "The Gothic XI" with oil and collage on canvas. It is the gorgeous tension between those coral grounds and the big, bright blue shapes that really grabs me. I can imagine Rothschild in her studio, shifting those cut-out shapes around on the canvas, playing with balance and form. The texture looks smooth, not too built up—maybe she was after a sense of floating. There's something so satisfying in how those big shapes come together, almost like pieces of a puzzle. They remind me of Matisse's cut-outs, but with a tougher edge. That slash of blue on the left feels particularly charged, like a quick, decisive gesture, slicing through the softness of the coral. You get the feeling she wasn’t messing around. It's like she's saying something about how we see, how we put things together, and how we find our own way of expressing ourselves. It feels like she is in conversation with other artists about the same thing.