Hinged Head 1974

Sorel Etrog’s “Hinged Head” is a drawing, and it looks like it was made with colored pencils. What grabs me is this idea of a head not as one solid thing, but as a bunch of parts joined together. The color is warm, almost like old photographs, or maybe the color of clay. It's built from straight lines and regular forms, not flowing curves, which gives it a machine-like quality. Take a look at the hinges themselves. They’re repeated, like a pattern, but they’re also disrupting the face, breaking it up. That one that cuts across the nose – ouch! It reminds me of Picasso, but more like a robot version. Is he thinking about how we’re all constructed, made of different pieces? It makes you wonder, what holds us together? Or maybe it's about how easily we can fall apart. It puts me in mind of Picabia, someone who liked to mash up humans and machines in his work, too.