I encountered this painting on the second floor of the Whitney Museum of Art. It was created by Pavel Tchelitchew in 1946, right after World War II. I wondered if the war had any significance on the drawing. It shows the skeletal backside of a man. He looks damaged internally, with all the yellows and reds in large splotches, and the blues splaying out of him. Maybe he’s dead and not at rest. I found it interesting how he’s not looking at us. Instead, he’s looking into a world behind the canvas, at the afterlife, or some other thing we haven’t seen before. He looks like a hurt Dr. Manhattan staring sadly into space. There’s a vast universe before him, but he still misses what he left behind.
I’m drawn to this painting because my dad can’t walk. When I was 2 years old, he grew a tumor inside one of his vertebrae, and the doctors had to mess with the nerves to extract it. I was never really too bugged with his disability. He never frowned when I talked to him. Maybe that’s why I can’t not smile when I talk, because he talked to same way. When I was a kid, I told him I was glad he was disabled, because we would be able to spend more time with each other at home. He wouldn’t have to go to work. But I never saw the inside of his body and soul.
I asked him more recently whether or not he ever dreams of walking again, and tells me that he does nearly every day. I didn’t know. I asked him how it felt like to wake up and not be able to feel his legs. He told me that it was pain. In one moment, he was walking in a garden, and in the next, he laid paralyzed on his bed. It was a stark contrast.
He’s usually cheerful nowadays. But sometimes, I see him staring into space. I walk in front of him and his pupils do not move, and I wonder what he’s actually looking at. I feel like at those times, he’s in the exact position of the man in Anatomical Painting, staring straight into the canvas trying to search for hints of a creator. Maybe he’s bitter, asking how God could have done such a thing to him. Maybe he’s grateful, that he hasn’t died and can still move his upper body. I don’t know. But I do have a feeling that what he’s staring it is more beautiful than what I’m usually staring at. Pain has a way of making things more beautiful.
Artist: Pavel Tchelitchew
Title: Anatomical Painting
Date of Work: 1946
Materials/Medium: Oil on Canvas
Duration: Indefinite
Genre: Visual Art – Painting
Venue: The Whitney Museum of Art
Friends? I was alone.
