Interviewed by Phil Beard and Chris Mullen, 1985
Left - Mine oil on canvas 50" x 40"
Middle - FORTUNE magazine Feb 1947
Right - Nude Descending a Stairs , 74" x 38"-
"I felt impelled towards a renewed disposition of this subject
made notorious with the uproar over Marcel Duchamp's entry in the
1913 Armory Show. The theme has since become generic, as have themes
such as bathers, piping Pans, or reclining nudes.. But my own statement
would not or could not, be cast in Duchamp's cubist-futurist idiom.
Serendipity led me to the Pre-Raphaelite Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones
whose painting The Golden Stairs suggested a scaffold for my own.
His Victorian maidens, a saccharine demiseraphic troupe, were for
me quite naturally no more embraceable than Duchamp's metallic robots.
However the sweep of Burne-Jones' design provided my nude her stage.
She makes entrance, then descends to diverse portraits comprising
not only head, but body & temper - revealed step by step as it
were, in shifting colors, light, and action. After "performing"
in choreographed (sometimes mocking) descent , she exits below to
Art and to the World. (My debt to Burne-Jones is acknowledged in the
lower right hand corner of my work, where his name can be seen on
a crumpled candy-wrapper.) " Statement by the Artist.
I would like to include more of Mr. Hahari's commercial work - Coke
and Tyres in due course
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