How black-and-white becomes color in Georges Rouault's art
Some painters mesmerize me. Albert Pinkham Ryder, Mark Rothko, and Georges Rouault, for example. Their work glows, albeit in different ways. Yet it’s Rouault I continue to follow.
Why Rouault? Color in painting suggests sensuality—black-and-white seeks something else. I love Rouault for his painted denizens of this benighted world—his painted Christs, too—but also for his solidarity with us, his visual participation alongside us in suffering. This is expressed most profoundly in 58 black-and-white, arm’s-length-size prints conceived as Miserere et Guerre (Mercy and War), a work that for me represents our journey through life.
Miserere means mercy. It is a lament and a plea. Rouault’s reply to suffering is the earliest Christian confession: Jesus is Lord.
