He Noise of Silence 1949

Mikuláš Medek conjured 'The Noise of Silence' with oil paint and who-knows-what-else. It’s that kinda painting, full of who-knows-what! Imagine him there, pushing paint, scraping back, maybe even muttering to himself. There’s a ghostly figure being scrutinized by peering eyes and it’s pinned down by a kind of surgical instrument; nearby, a grasshopper is doing its thing. The paint is thin, almost translucent, in places, like he's trying to catch a fading memory. I wonder if he felt like he was dissecting something, like a feeling or a thought, laying it bare for examination. Artists do that, you know. We dig around in the muck of our minds and try to make sense of it all. He brings to mind the way Leonora Carrington painted dreams, or maybe Remedios Varo’s symbolic worlds. We’re all just buzzing around in the studio, listening to each other through time, trying to figure out this crazy thing called being human. Medek’s painting is a strange, beautiful reminder of that.