I Have Eyes Like You

Datelate 1970s

Credit LineGift of Bertram Podell

Dimensions21 11/16 x 29 5/8 in. (55.1 x 75.3 cm)

Object number1981.002.011

Label TextDutch artist Karel Appel was one of the founders in 1948 of Cobra, an international avant-garde movement originated by a group of European artists in the wake of the Second World War. Cobra was an acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, the artists' native cities, all of which had suffered under Nazi occupation. In reaction to the horrific oppression of the war years, the Cobra artists rejected all artistic and political dogma and sought an expression uninhibited by the constraints of reason. Their interests paralleled other artistic movements of the post-war years. Like l'art brut ("raw art") of Jean Dubuffet in Paris, the art of Cobra found its inspiration in the untutored spontaneity of folk art, the art of children, and the art of the insane. Its instinctive and improvisatory approach was also akin to Abstract Expressionism in New York. While the Cobra artists displayed a stronger interest in figural representation than their American counterparts, the apparent ferocity of the encounter between the artists and their materials is similar to that seen in the works of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

In response to the Dutch tradition in modern painting, Appel claimed the energetic expressionism of Vincent van Gogh as his own and disavowed the orderly, rational abstract geometry of Piet Mondrian. Although the formal collaboration of the Cobra artists was short-lived (1948-1951), he has remained true in his work to the ideals of playful experiment and immediacy of feeling. Over the years Appel has continued to depict the same childlike motifs, antic human faces and fanciful animals; but the style of their depiction has been constantly changing.

The works in the current exhibition were all produced within a few years of each other in the late 1970s. At that time Appel adopted a new manner of expression using thick, parallel strokes of vivid, contrasting colors in both his paintings and prints. Perspective and traditional modeling are totally absent in these works; both figure and background are built up with the same densely-packed welts of pigment. Appel has described the rhythmic, emotionally charged-brushstrokes of this style, saying, "In my painting the form becomes vibrations, it enters the formless form, formless existence that I paint-vibrations of colors."

ProvenanceEx coll. Bertram Podell (1925-2005), New York, New York. Ex coll. Emory University Art History Department, received as gift from Podell, 1981. Transferred to Emory University Museum of Art and Archaeology, ca. 1981.

Status

Not on view

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