22philoctetes-12-08.jpg Dessin par John Gorman

The Trojan hero is here seen from the back, holding his head between in hands, prostrate. His incredibly drawn body, both massive and streamlined, unfolds in a stunning way in space, the artist emphasising the wounded foot. The silhouette, though highly perceptible, escapes the figurative to acquire the status of a Cubist 21st century extension, which is all the more prodigious that here, one can’t find any ostensible break in the line, so harmonic. It is rather as if the figure, overwhelmed by negative thoughts and emotions, was returning like ghosts till occupying almost the entire composition, in the form of horizontal black or red stripes, hatches, run-out. It is as if the hero himself was returning to the limbo from which the creator extracted him. And one can think here of Michelangelo’s obsession regarding the sculpture already present in the block of marble he was carving. Of Derrida and his writing on ghosts. Of Picasso’s work from which this drawing both borrows the dexterity while exacerbating the novelty one can notice here, as, precisely, there is no other ‘’Mask’’ than the one which could be to make history more alive, in a time where history has been erased, as the Greek lessons, a time where pastiches without knowledge play the role of the authentic art the usurpers self-‘’baptised’’ ‘’artists’’ have been only able to produce for decades now.