Decay Dance 1969

Rupert Garcia made this print, called Decay Dance, sometime in the late twentieth century. Check out the color, how the blocks of flat color sit next to each other, almost like they’re bumping into each other! There’s red, blue, pink, yellow, gray and white. Look how those colors make shapes, and those shapes create the image of a man’s face, split in two. The top half of the face is in bright colors, whereas the bottom half is yellow and grey. It almost seems like the top part of the face is pushing down onto the bottom, misshaping it. It’s like the picture is being squashed, or melting, or even dancing! This way of working with flat areas of pure color makes me think of Warhol and Pop Art. But with Decay Dance there's also something political, in the way the artist has treated the face. Nothing feels fixed or certain in this image, and I like that. It allows for lots of different interpretations.