Batman and Joker in Profile Amid Scattering Bats — Print & Oil Painting

The two heads are pushed to opposite sides of the canvas and the middle is left almost bare: a warm cream ground, a few brown splatters, a drift of small black bats crossing it. That empty centre is what makes the picture work, because it forces the eye to travel between two faces that will never meet.

At the left, the Joker is painted in cold blue-grey, hair hanging in wet strands, eyes hooded, the scarred mouth widened by red that has been allowed to run down toward the jaw. At the right, the cowl is rendered in warm bronze and gold, catching light along the brow and the cheekbone, mouth flat and closed.

Airbrush does most of the work. Edges dissolve into the ground rather than stopping at a contour, particularly around the Joker's coat and the lower hem of the cape, so both figures look as though they are condensing out of the paper instead of sitting on top of it.

The bats supply the diagonal, streaming from the upper left down to the lower right across both figures and binding two separate portraits into one event. Part of our DC Universe collection. The merged acrylic head fuses these two faces into one, and the fractured split face tears that fusion apart again.