Analysis of a Jack McConville’s panting: rustic joints or a disturbed classical idyll?

Painting is painting and Jack McConville (1984, Edinburgh) is a painter. This time however we won’t be talking about his approach to the canvas, or describing his style, or telling you which brand of colors he likes in order to classify his language. Instead we would like to analyze a single iconic work, using only the info provided by the picture itself and its caption.

Our first feeling is that the three unfinished naked male torsos and the sensual probably female fragment on the bottom right corner of the canvas represent a moving scene of seduction. The strokes of blue – so in contrast with the same pink/orange flash characterizing the four anthropomorphic elements – are evidently traces of a fresh element between the bodies. It may as well be air or water. The disturbed group of heavy black lines at the central torso’s conjunction between its right arm and the pectoral is a sort of focal point of the picture, placed near the centre of the canvas. The asymmetric right pectoral enforces this complex “problem solving” area.

The torso on the upper left corner of the canvas is transparent. Mountains, or hills, are behind him, on the background. The group of curved lines under them is representing waters, perhaps a lake. Behind the central torso is an ambiguous architectonic structure. It could be a wooden fence, part of a ruined shack, or it could also address to a classical temple. The plank between the transparent torso and the disturbed one is broken and probably linked to the other broken plank at the left of the fence. The torsos, the fence, the background are probably the unfinished parts of the same experience that crosses into each others, thus representing a time lapse, not a fixed tableau.

November 17, 2022