Organic Landscape 1932

Curator: What an intriguing painting. This is "Organic Landscape" by Jules Perahim, created in 1932 using oil paint. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: My first impression is one of unsettling tranquility. There's a traditional landscape format with muted colors, but then your eye is caught by these strange, web-like structures dominating the foreground. It is almost unsettling. Curator: Those structures are certainly the key to understanding the work. Perahim was deeply involved with avant-garde circles and the context of Romanian society's move toward industrialization and state-sponsored racism cannot be separated from his visual experimentation. We are facing the artist's take on figuration, mixed with elements of Surrealism, to deconstruct traditional understandings of labor as well as ideas surrounding nature versus the artificial. Editor: I see that. Considering that formal balance, it's intriguing how those foreground forms simultaneously attract and repel the eye. The texture is peculiar, and it makes one consider form and subject, what one expects from the visual qualities that arise from Surrealism. It certainly generates a strange optical push and pull... what is going on here? Curator: I feel those "web-like" structures may refer to how industrializing mentalities of Perahim's time created harmful boundaries between industry, society, and nature; in my view, it's more than a mere stylistic choice. Editor: Yes, I concede, there’s an unnerving element within those forms. If we remove them from this landscape format and isolate them for structural assessment, the result would become extremely unappealing, perhaps even horrifying. It may be those unsettling feelings emerge in contrast to an otherwise serene image, thus contributing further tension to our viewing experience. Curator: Precisely. By bringing social context and modes of art-making together, the work achieves the artist's commentary: our moment-in-time, social experience and individual reaction is what matters when deciding the meaning of this artistic production. Editor: And through those contrasting pictorial forms Perahim highlights just that. Well, looking closely at Perahim's technique through these opposing elements creates an unusually satisfying yet disquieting harmony. Curator: Yes, a potent commentary couched within a beguiling visual language!