The art represents life, energy, force, strength, power, and rebirth.

Result #1

The art represents life, energy, force, strength, power, and rebirth. . . . and there are oppositions—there are intimations of death and life. . . .there are oppositions. . . . there are two sexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Result #2

The art represents life, energy, force, strength, power, and rebirth. The artist, the miner, the boxer, the poet, the diplomat—all are the same in the self-evident, and are united in a shared commitment to struggle for justice and truth.The exhibitions title was borrowed from an essay in the journals Art in the Twenty-First Century by Franz Kafka, which analyzes the history of German art and culture. The context of this period is the World War, which was marked by the destruction of the Berlin Wall, which ushered in a new era that is marked by contradictions between those who view the new world as the promised land of freedom and those who, seeing the transformation of the world, see it as a reality in which destruction still reigns supreme. While war is the universal language of totalitarianism, the artist is used to confronting and to attempting to control the world. As Kafka wrote, We are all strangers to a universe whose reality has yet to be formed. The words that accompanied the paintings, three well-chosen, realistic-style titles that evoke themes Kafka encountered in reading the Wall and of this period of history in which the contradictions between the atomized world of social democracy and the apocalyptic world of the atom were vividly manifest. They were submitted to the artist, who, as Kafka has it, responded to a call from the First World War. He sought to depict the world from the perspective of an observer who is as yet not a participant in it—a passive spectator.Each of these paintings contains an image of a standing male figure holding a hammer, a plow, or a shovel. Their faces are covered with heavy, broad, black strokes. The figures are angry, as if they have been chased out of a private, highly private world. They do not, however, seem to be attacking another human being. Their stance suggests that they are capable of nothing but destroying the world. Their aggression is directed at us.

Result #3

The trick of growing and evolving within the same person. The traditional painting is not dead but frozen. It is hard for the viewer to see beyond the surface. The symbol of death—the power of death and the unconscious—is transmuted into a sublime surface. In the year 2000, Tait left Paris for New York. The wake of the mourning of those who had died, including the artists and director Guillaume Fayard, who had died in 1992. He now goes to visit his friends in New York. The sentiment is not sentimental. His style is strong and clear. The artist proposes an ambiguous exchange between subjects and roles. The physical loss is reduced to a mirror of the spiritual loss. A well-worn, worn-down painting loses its emotional presence, and becomes something else. The white on the canvas is neither transcendent nor sentimental. Its artifice is a sign of deep mourning.Tait takes the imagery of death very personally. He uses it to bring us close to the living dead, which is to say the dead in life. He offers us an opportunity to examine the emotional and the psychic states of the unconscious. He gives the image of death a texture of detail. But Tait is an artist who never took the appearance of being exclusive. He always looked for ways of using the formal and the emotional. His paintings are an homage to and an indictment of the death of the art. Death, Tait reminds us, does not have a place of absolute permanence. Life turns on our own experiences, and only then can it be experienced. This passage from the immaterial to the material is one that Tait explores with a clear and enthusiastic hand.

Result #4

—Ricardo De Montebello

Result #5

The art represents life, energy, force, strength, power, and rebirth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .