Mary Cassatt’s painting Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child dwells in motherhood. Its careful composition combines with a smudgy Impressionist technique. This painting captures a moment of messy mothering.
Marcel Duchamp’s painting The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even has two frames. The top encapsulates a delicate silvery bride. She’s isolated and fragile. In fact, it feels a bit forlorn up there, as if our lady’s gazing out the window.
This painting, Young Woman Drawing by Marie-Denise Villers meditates on love versus art. Art wins the contest here. This piece works as a rumination on the self and identity too. That’s partly because of the subject matter. But the situation behind the work tells that story as well.
When we think of Georgia O’Keeffe, paintings like White Rose with Larkspur No 2 pop to mind. They rouse realistic flora with a fantasy feel. O’Keeffe zooms in tight. So, it’s like the flower took a selfie.
Obsessed with nostalgia, Cézanne painted Bathers from memory. It’s one of his many works that dance between reality and invention. Cézanne creates a tension here that reveres the very past it can’t quite enumerate.
A Bigger Splash by David Hockney resonates across time with its familiar, fresh image. Painted in 1967, this masterpiece feels new no matter when you check it out. Sure, modern classic sounds like an oxymoron. But it’s also a fitting phrase for this piece.