Even as a teenager Delacroix hated the “fussy” neoclassicism of Ingres. Romanticism in his hands was expressive colour, looser brushstrokes, a certain vagueness of image. This did not make him a modernist but he had taken a dramatic step toward a modern style. No less an admirer than Cezanne said of one painting “You can find us all in this Delacroix”.
Lucas’s New York retrospective has been widely praised. Her sculptures use unglamorous materials and are both absurd and articulate – “dirty jokes are crafted without malice—though without mercy, either.” In an interview she admits “I am really not grungy at all. I might be using quite cheap materials, but I am always quite precise … a formalist even.”
Unable to sell her abstract work, af Klint blamed backward public tastes. In her will she prohibited exhibition of her work for decades after her death. What is now clear is that she was advanced and preceded the “breakthroughs” of abstract pioneers like Kandinsky and Mondrian. As one critic notes “Her artistic ship sails some of the deepest waters around.”