Swan, Accordion, and Mercury 1994

Philip Pearlstein made this watercolor of a model and various studio objects – Swan, Accordion and Mercury – using delicate washes of browns, grays, and pinks. I can imagine the act of painting this picture was akin to setting up a still life, where objects are strategically placed to test out new pictorial ideas. I can just imagine what Pearlstein might have been thinking as he painted the forms with fluid, diluted pigments, one layer at a time. Here, we can really see the surface qualities of the watercolor paper itself – its texture and absorbency. The paint is thin, allowing the support to shine through. The artist allows for ambiguity in how the objects relate to one another in space, especially the way the foot hangs over the accordion. There’s a lineage here, maybe harking back to some of the early surrealists, like de Chirico, who combined figuration with found objects. I can see a through line in all of these artists wanting to create a sense of wonder and surprise through the process of painting. Painting embraces uncertainty; no single interpretation should be final!