By Richard Mather
Potato eaters – five peasant women, clothed in rags, seated round a square table in a brown room. The scene is set. Outside the frame, a famous artist inspects the dim and manifold prospect. Five chairs, two forks, an oil lamp, a tablecloth, people, a kettle, wooden beams. But nothing – not a single thing – can be fully described, recorded, depicted. Every angle of vision – each perception – refuses to yield the clock’s essence, the kettle’s nature. Perturbed and defeated, the artist withdraws. And the plates, chairs, women, clock, oil lamp, continue to equally exist on the flat surface.
Comments