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Nocturnes: On An Eerie Portrait
[after the tone of Sarban]
The painting is certainly illusive.
From the proper distance and perspective,
it presents a rather handsome young man
just on the threshold of adult manhood,
his boyhood past but not so very far past,
still within reach whenever wanted.
The appearance of anatomical exactness,
of lines and outlines filled in,
fails upon closer inspection.
The entire image is composed of jagged
brush strokes---violently skewed as if
the brush had actually beaten the canvas.
Hideous is the effect when closely, too closely, viewed.
And the face, at intimate proximity,
is fluid, changeable, almost capable of movement
(the way the dead on display seem to twitch in coffins):
becoming cynical, then sardonic, then cruel
and (as one hopes this is only a trick upon the eyes)
. . . homicidal.
