Black Rationality 1982

Albert Oehlen made this painting, Black Rationality, with oil paint, though from the looks of things, he may have used enamel, too. Oehlen's got this slap-dash way of laying down paint, where you can see how the brush was dragged across the canvas, and the way he layers the colours creates depth but also a kind of visual static. Look at how he renders those skeletal forms - the bones aren't just shapes; they're built up with layers of thick paint, almost like he's reconstructing them right on the canvas. And there's this tension between representation and abstraction. The subject is definitely skeletons, but the execution is so loose and gestural that it verges on pure abstraction. It reminds me a bit of Francis Bacon, that sense of the figure being both present and dissolving at the same time. It makes you think, doesn't it, about what painting can do, and how it can hold so many contradictory ideas all at once.