Joker Gesturing in a Warm Oil Painting — Print & Oil Painting

The right hand is raised to chest height, turned palm inward, fingers curled loosely with thumb and index almost meeting. It is a talking hand, the shape people make to hold a listener still while they finish a sentence, and it has been painted with more care than anything in the canvas except the eyes.

Everything else follows the conventions of a formal three-quarter portrait: the sitter turned slightly to his left and cropped at the hip, the other hand pushed into a trouser pocket, an unreadable interior behind him. Only the costume disturbs the arrangement, a scarlet jacket over a mustard waistcoat and green shirt, and a face painted white with two blue points above the eyes and a red nose.

The ground is oil at its most atmospheric: ochre, rust and olive brushed wet into wet, a pale vertical band of light down the left side, darker passages massing into the bottom corners. Nothing in it can be identified, which keeps every question the picture raises pointed at the sitter.

The expression is the reason to look twice. Under the makeup the mouth is closed and the eyes are steady, almost apologetic. From our DC Universe collection. The red neon portrait shows the same figure at his loudest, and the impressionist study treats the subject with an even freer brush.