The magic of painting is in how an accumulation of color can encapsulate and elaborate upon lived experience. A tired observation, perhaps, but when such a moment hits full force it still comes across as something of a miracle. How can so much be embodied by (to quote Symbolist painter Maurice Denis) “a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order”? It seems so improbable, and so rare. This train of thought came to mind while traversing “Independent Visions: Helene Schjerfbeck and Her Contemporaries,” a pleasantly innocuous exhibition of four Finnish painters, all of whom are women. Pleasant and innocuous, that is, until one encounters Self-Portrait with Red Spot (1944) by Schjerfbeck (1862–1946). Has there been a meditation on the depredations of growing older quite as pitiless? You’d have to look to late Rembrandt or Bonnard to find a...

 
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