Page 20 - Studio International - February 1966

well as a formal one ? unlike in a sense the humour of Chagall, but it's much
Forge In certain passages, yes. With the larger pictures more firmly integrated in a non-fantasy world, and this
this is even more so. I think it's particularly strong in seems to give it considerable added value. It belongs
some of the great reclining nudes in baths. There are there the whole time, it belongs there with sex and
some passages which are clearly very meaningful in the with eating.
overall configuration of colour and in the forms of the Forge Yes, and there's that picture of the bathroom
picture. Yet I can't give names to them. And I have to with the girl's legs shooting out from the bottom of the
keep turning them into something. And if I don't look canvas. It's very difficult to suppress the fantasy that
out suddenly they slip away and become nothing again, somehow she is making the drawing-is in fact painting
and I have to turn them back into the side of the bath the picture.
or whatever it is. Sylvester Yes, because there's a very curious thing in
Podro What I've felt in front of Bonnard I've never that picture, which is that Bonnard put himself in ; over
felt in front of any other visual artist, and that is-the on the left you just see the edge of his dressing-gown
man was being funny the whole time. Even when it was
a girl taking her clothes off. And to sustain simul-
taneously this dryness, this incipient humour, in this
way, seems a crucial part of the procedure.
There is one picture of a girl set against the daylight
streaming in. You're looking at her over her shoulder
and she's looking at herself in the mirror. Suddenly,
Right
Nude in bath tub 1925 I looked at her reflection in the mirror with a very
Pencil 4 7/8 x 6 3/8 in. awkward sense of recognition, because unlikely
Lent by a private collector
though it seems from looking at the girl, the reflection
Below
Nu dans le Bain 1935 in the mirror is part of the torso of the Dying Slave of
Canvas 36 5/8 x 57 3/4 in. Michaelangelo. Later he will have a very large cow
Signed
Lent by the Petit Calais, Paris which appears beside the head of the small boy. It's not