Artwork Title: Interior with Two Figures

Interior with Two Figures, 1968

Elmer Bischoff

...the literalism of Hopper's work was anathema to Bischoff. He liked to joke that the couple in Interior with Two Figures "had a falling out because he wants to watch the fights and she wants to watch something else," while in The Yellow Lampshade, "the two had patched up their differences and are in a better mood. The real subject of these two paintings, however, as with all of Bischoff's figurative work, is a compacting of experience and above all, an expression of ... the "aesthetic emotion." Color and Light, in this case a mix of interior and exterior light, were, as always, paramount vehicles for Bischoff, a shared preoccupation, he conceded, with Hopper and Jan Vermeer. Yet Bischoff's light is rarely their light. In Yellow Lampshade, one of his finest paintings of the period, the light is active, almost kinetic, flickering and shimmering across the canvas in a manner recalling Bonnard's dappled interiors. [Elmer Bischoff: The Ethics of Paint by Susan Landauer; Google Books]
Uploaded on Jan 10, 2016 by Suzan Hamer

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