Two Female Models on Eames Chair and Stool, 1976
after Philip Pearlstein
Under the solemn stare, we fade and dissolve. The silence is hollow and vast as that of a cathedral dome. What are you looking at? Hovering in the hall, eyes half-peeled as if still in dream. Call it vastness, call it taciturn. It is snakelike—the encounter between intent and perception. Skin on leather, arms and legs folded like napkins. Darkness runs through our veins. Where have you gone? Elongated, dumbstruck flowers: bluebells, bleeding hearts. An apartment we can’t afford. I find you again in the crossfire of floodlights, those last moments of sleep when our instruments clamor. Hands. Eyes. In private stress or public disaster, we can wring no message from them.
Female Model Standing by Easel, 1974
after Philip Pearlstein
What’s on the other side, we cannot know—a canvas singing with emptiness or penetrated by image. Silenced. On this side, a familiar surface. Bisected shadows tease us with their symmetries. We look in the shapes for meaning we can put on like a tailored coat. You ask yourself, consciously or not, why am I interpreting the image this way? . . . who am I? Visibility is not conducive to imagination. I tell you what I’ve been thinking and bite your hand when you offer my words back to me. I erect a mast and crossbar on which to hang my desires. Mercy and submission. Disaster. I love you most when your back is turned to me, when I cannot see your face.
Two Models, One Seated, 1966
after Philip Pearlstein
It’s hard to get just right, the two of us, looking ahead from the crossroads of each other. A fallen sheet, your foot arched as if before a race; my arm tucked behind my back, reaching for you even when I’m turned away. We do our best to find a pattern by which to divide ourselves. Lines cut through one another, and we brush away excess proportions. There is talk of time and the years in either direction. We dissect the difference between choosing the paint and the subject. You tell me, I will make myself small. I refuse this, my arm behind my back. I say no, again, even as I see it taking shape, both of our hands at the braid, a half-moon gleaming in the background.