Has Anything Happened? 1941

Istvan Farkas made this painting, ‘Has Anything Happened?’ with visible, expressive brushstrokes, mostly in muted browns, greens, and blues. It feels like you could watch the scene come into being, shifting and emerging, like an old memory. I imagine Farkas standing before the canvas, questioning, probing, maybe even feeling a sense of longing. What’s so striking is the contrast between the still life on the red table and the blurred figures in the background, as if he’s asking: what is it to be still, and what is it to move? The paint is applied in thin layers, so you can still see the weave of the canvas beneath. Look at that tree trunk on the right! That single gesture communicates so much about the weight and age of that tree, and the way it reaches for the sky. Painters have always been in conversation, riffing off of one another’s ideas, and Farkas seems to be in dialogue with Cezanne in his treatment of the still life. For Farkas, painting seems like an embodied form of expression, open to ambiguity and inviting endless interpretation.