It is beautiful, and rich and sad and complex. There’s questions there for me (being almost entirely ignorant of this artist and his work) about stylistic choices versus ability.
Oddly enough, the last few paintings are bringing to my mind the scene in the (2004) remake of Dawn of the Dead where the gun shop owner crosses over from life to unlife as he is writing a message to his friends across the way.
(1933-2007) was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1995. For the remaining five years of his life
I feel bad quibbling about the detail that 1995 + 5 ≠ 2007.
Really beautiful and heartbreaking.
The quality of the latter one starts reminding me of Francis Bacon or Ralph Steadman…
Sticking my neck out here.
But perhaps he didn’t start making self-portraits until 2002, or something?
The NYT article is from 2006, the year before he died. It said that he was in a care facility and no longer painting. Indeed, he did self portraits from 1995, the year of his diagnosis, until he could no longer paint, in 2000.
Alzheimer’s has come to stay a while with a member of my extended family. Similarly, an artist and musician, a brilliant mind, sharp and incisive, keenly and proudly aware of their inarguably extraordinary mental capacities.
We’re just at the start of the curve, so I expect to experience an abstracted version of the change in paintings. I’m rather sad, as this is one of those individuals who truly forms a pillar and scaffold of the character of an entire family.
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