Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus # 004 2009

The late Alexander Roitburd created this painting, Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus # 004, by layering loose, cartoonish shapes and lines over classical figurative painting. Imagine the initial washes of muted color establishing a somber mood, and then the artist comes in with neon colors almost like graffiti! I sympathize with Roitburd, I know what it's like to just ruin a painting, or what people perceive to be ruining something. It's almost as if he’s making a statement about the act of painting itself, or defacing the old masters, questioning our relationship with art history. The paint looks thick in places, especially in the figures, giving them weight and presence, while the overlaid lines are thin, almost like afterthoughts. That squiggly line across the center, it's like a visual pathway, connecting different parts of the composition and maybe different ideas in Roitburd’s head. Artists are always riffing off each other, in a constant conversation across time. This piece, with its mix of reverence and irreverence, reminds us that painting is an ongoing experiment, full of risks and possibilities.