Ian H
Squire
Lightbulb moment. Beckett had died.
Arikha couldn’t go on. He went on. What broke the spell was a black and white photo of Beckett. Drawing from photographs was against Arikha’s principles but he realised he could draw the photograph as an object. In 1991 it became part of a still life, Beckett’s familiar face on a shelf next to a candlestick and peeling wallpaper, the surface of a memory, seen in the moment and seized.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n19/gaby-wood/at-the-fine-art-society
Arikha couldn’t go on. He went on. What broke the spell was a black and white photo of Beckett. Drawing from photographs was against Arikha’s principles but he realised he could draw the photograph as an object. In 1991 it became part of a still life, Beckett’s familiar face on a shelf next to a candlestick and peeling wallpaper, the surface of a memory, seen in the moment and seized.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n19/gaby-wood/at-the-fine-art-society
