Week #3, Unbearable Lightness III

Dusti Bongé, Untitled (Surrealist Composition with Figures and Splatter)), 1950, mixed media on paper, 11 ¾” x 9”.

This week's weird and wonderful surrealist work with Keyhole People again features the figures that are vaguely reminiscent of humans reduced to just a few bare bodily elements. And here too the main forms are partially enveloped by a random pattern of bright stipples, paint splatter, and wavy lines.

But this work has some features that are very different from the previous works. For one, despite the clear trend toward abstraction, this piece nonetheless still seems to tell a bit of a story. Secondly, there is a more traditional hierarchy of figure and ground, with the three vertical figures set against a bright blue and green background with a horizon line creating depth.

In this composition there are two protagonists, one in brown, and one in black & white stripes. With their dark tones they dominate the scene, even though a third, white form is at their center. This third shape may or may not be a Keyhole person. Given the remaining context in this work, and how the narrative could be interpreted, it could be an inanimate object.

With the little wavy lines in the lower blue background, and the two main figures both teetering on opposite ends of a concavely bowed form reminiscent of a boat, these characters appear to be in a coastal scene. The white caps on the water, and the boat, in turn suggests that the white form with its black outlines at the center, could very well be a sail twisting in the wind.