Sailing Vessel at Sea 1920

Léon Spilliaert made this image of a Sailing Vessel at Sea using paint and ink, it has a feeling of being lost at sea. The color palette is so unusual, acid greens and purples mixed with deep blacks. There is a process of layering going on, the artist is building up this strange and evocative scene through intuitive mark making. I think about how the texture of the sea dominates the scene, made of short strokes of dark green paint, like the sea is both moving and still. The black ship is a ghostly cutout set against the sickly green sky. It has no details, so the viewer fills in the gaps. In the lower foreground a strange, almost solid, area of black is broken by squiggles. The water reflects the sky, the marks are repeated in the waves above. The image has some of the darkness of Munch and a surreal quality that seems to look forward to Magritte. Spilliaert’s vision embraces ambiguity, it is a glimpse of a dream world, which is both menacing and beautiful.