Christ is Risen

One of the great paintings at the Chicago Art Institute is Picabia's "the priest" which I snapped a photo of here. I'm amazed at the size of it. Picabia, one of the founders of Dada, created a large piece here, I suppose from his post-Dada interest. In the 1940s he did a series of pastisches on movie posters. Mostly he's known for his earlier work. This piece looks like it's from in the teens or twenties, and it exhibits features of synthetic cubism - color variation, organic shapes. Note how the eye and face of the priest are suggested, but then fragmented. Perhaps this refers tot he fragmenting relationship of the Church and society of that time.
This photograph gives the sense of the painting's scale and size. It is a monumental image in this gallery space, controlling a large area around the painting. Unlike Seurat's Grande Jatte in the same museum, this painting doesn't draw people into its space but sends them back. In this way the priest is an intrusion, carrying a larger than life aura into the room, but an aura that people cannot connect with.