EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

The Poet’s Eye

What you see may not be all you see because somewhere inside most true artworks one form is laid over another. Here's a simple example from a print made by Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), a leader of the New York School in the mid-twentieth century. If it were not titled The Poet's Eye, you might not know what you were looking at. Tipped off, the eye with a dot as its pupil becomes obvious. However, eyes are not really that shape and pupils are much larger. It looks more like a woman's breast. The nipple within the breast is in the correct proportion (but not as a pupil) and the roundish form is angled like a breast too. It is therefore both breast and eye because the inner eye of the artist, the eye of his imagination, is fertile and therefore feminine. So whenever you make sense of a form, even if it appears totally natural, don't stop there. Think twice.

Note: As a male artist, Motherwell also conveys through the female breast that his mind is androgynous because if, as a poet's, it represents all humanity, it must be.