17584 (_The stupid woman …_) 1932

John Elsas's 'The Stupid Woman', made with an illustrative touch sometime in the early 20th century, looks like a page torn from a children's book, but with a slightly sinister edge. The figures are built up in thin layers of color wash and collaged paper, the palette restrained to pastel shades with shocks of bright pink. These are not portraits, but rather character studies, with their stilted postures and vacant expressions. I can see the delicate strokes and the paper cutouts, like a craft project gone slightly askew. The bright pink platform on which the figures stand looks so fragile, like a stage set for a play, or maybe just a house of cards. But the real sting is in the work's title, as if Elsas himself were the puppet master pulling the strings, and judging them at the same time. In some ways, this reminds me of Redon, who similarly worked with ethereal figures in symbolic arrangements.