One of the greast lessons of the work of R. B. Kitaj, as his Times obituary says, "was that the accumulated layers of association embedded in a specific image could themselves convey meaning." It is easy to dismiss what he did as "cut-and-paste" postmodernism but, as the range and resonance of his references and allusions demonstrate, he painted in a contemporary tradition that, by bringing micro-images and narratives together, revealed connections which then suggest wider macro-images and narratives.
Jacques Maritain suggested, in The Philosophy of Art, that such multiple signification is what creates joy or delight in a work of art as “the more the work of art is laden with significance … the vaster and the richer and the higher will be the possibility of joy and beauty”. The work of Kitaj is an example of just this contention.
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Chagall Guevara - Violent Blue.
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