Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Blanche Lazzell
American; 20th-century
New York, NY: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
61%
Composition. 1928. Oil on board
Lazzell's got a good basic sense for cubist structure — look at how the tilt leftward of that large tan square at bottom and the grey analyst's-couch-form just above it tip off the opposite lean of that curvy brown boomerang at the composition's top, with just about everything else in the picture standing up stock straight — and elements like that blue accent just below and to the right of center prove that there's some kind of color-logic to the painting's prevailing "dullness." But there's something about Lazzell's handling that seems out of key: for its focus on pictorial structure, the painting's surface is a bit too palpable, but not enough so to make it seem like a deliberate or integrated effect. Too, the density of forms comprising the central tableau is not quite justified by how they relate to each other; a similar impression could likely have been achieved through fewer means. (2024)