If Life Were Life There Would Be No Death

Ivan Albright - The Vermonter
(If Life Were Life There Would Be No Death)
1966-1977
at Dartmouth College
oil on masonite

Ivan Le Lorraine Albright (1897 - 1983) liked to give to his works long and enigmatic titles. Does this Vermonter know some secret that we don't, of life forever; or is he rather well prepared for what will come?

Ivan Albright is considered to belong to Magical Realism (which should bring him near the Latino-American writers: his works, rigorously real in their appearance, contain something strange, difficult to describe, that bring them suddenly in the realm of imaginary).

Ivan Albright, Self-Portrait in Georgia, 1967-1968
oil on panel

Erich Fischl (born in 1948) takes another view on the end of life. It is no more magic in his work, just an account of the way we regress. A naked old man, whose skin has the translucence of an old parchment, advancing with fear along a Roman hallway: a mixed meditation about aging and eroticism. Sexual desire within the context of decay and of death approaching: we are defined by the erotic dimension and our life has a terminus. Is it really toward the end our desire balanced by self-reflection?

It is a tribute for the father of the artist, who had died one year before Eric Fischl made the portrait.

Eric Fischl - Frailty Is a Moment of Self-Reflection, 1996
oil on linen

(Paint Made Flesh)