by John Gorman

Artwork Description

Three ages of Theodora

0.0 x 0.0

Three ages of Theodora, charcoal on paper, 36x26cm Over the centuries, artists have represented the three ages of woman or man - more rarely, although Picasso's famous work should obviously be mentioned. Hans Baldung Grien (1484-1545) produced a series of famous paintings representing this trilogy of the same becoming another one as time went by. But then, Death was always present, giggling and brandishing his funeral weapons. We won't forget Klimt and the sweetness of his work. Maybe too sweet? Here, nothing reminds us of the past masters in their evocation of the ravages of time on women. Nor a little girl. This drawing is more reminiscent of the Harems that Picasso made after Delacroix, or Delacroix himself, or the famous Minotauromachies in which Olga becomes the monstrous being she had ended up being in the bosom of the couple she formed with Picasso, in love with Marie-Thérèse Walter. For there is indeed something monstrous in this work, but so subtly depicted that it is very difficult for the spectator to understand what is at stake here, between these three women whose title tells us that they are one and the same woman. Perhaps the one in the centre, turned from behind, in a somewhat grotesque posture, reminds us that Theodora was a circus artist and bear-owner at a young age? The woman on the right, who is herself (older? There is no clear indication of this) seems to be pulling her hair out, as one draws a line under her past. This woman is said to be the empress, half dressed in oriental clothes, her head bent over as if to meditate on her destiny: she would thus chase her unglamorous past from her thoughts via this grabbing. There is no sign of decay, however, in her glorious Ruben-like body, her slender waist and voluptuous hips. On the left, the woman who conquered Justinian, the incarnation of supreme feminine beauty, abandons herself in a lascivious pose, her head turned upside down, her abundant and flowing hair - it would have delighted Baudelaire - framing her languid face but, an important detail, an arm as if atrophied, legs (and this is the case of her sisters or doubles) reduced to dead, frozen, cubist forms in a word. This woman seized in her three ages thus remains the same, and the artist plays with the immemorial theme of the Three Graces, without forgetting, therefore, that Theodora had two sisters... The greatest masters can be summoned as to the supreme beauty of the left Theodora, but what about her legs as caught in vices and which ridicule her somewhat? This play with references from a distant and immemorial past and the experiments of Cubism - and we will not forget Cézanne, Rodin, other key artists of this in-between period from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th who were so important in their experiments on the female body -, makes this enigmatic work, without any real iconographic reference, a free and exceptional version in its lines, its inscription of the figures on a single plane, so many compositions associating naked women. John Gorman's style blossoms, in this freedom that he grants to his wide shot where the three female nudes undulate without really merging. The line dances, passionately free as well, and it would almost seem that a play of mirrors was necessary for this dazzling composition, if we did not know that the artist does not work from the motif. A thrilling drawing. Delphine Costedoat

Artwork Details

Medium: Drawing Other

Genre: Figurative