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| Paul Edwards: |
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Wyndham Lewis Portraits |
“Red Portrait” Oil on canvas 610 x 915 mm (24'' x 36''), Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust: G. and V. Lane Collection.
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| Lewis liked to paint worlds dominated by a single color. Both this portrait and the one on p.95, are dominated by red, though to very different effect. The dreamlike and insubstantial atmosphere is only partly created by the strange ‘lunar’ landsape above the mantelpiece. As in drawings leading up to the painting, the figure is an apparition that seems to emerge out of and dissolve into the ground on which it is minimally delineated. The painting becomes a meditation on the transcience of human identity as an organisation of matter and its persistence as something that apparently transcends this material embodyment. Undoubtedly one of Lewis' greatest paintings, it completely contradicts the myth of Lewis the satirist and ‘Enemy’ — a myth he himself felt was necessary to his career. |
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