Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, an exhibition at the Met Breuer, is filled with curiosities.
Take, for instance, the 1775 portrait of a Spanish noblewoman by Anton Raphael Mengs. The subject sits in a chair, resplendent in a silk dress and fur-lined coat. The sumptuous fabric, for which the sitter undoubtedly paid a tidy sum in order to impress viewers with her status, is not what draws the eye or raises eyebrows today. At some point the sitter's face was blurred, her distinguishing features reduced to ghostly black shadows cast on opaque flesh. She looks rather like a bank robber wearing pantyhose over her head. The sitter's lapdog was traced but never painted, leaving a pug-shaped outline of raw wood panel in the middle of the portrait, surrounded on all sides by the rich colors and textures of a finished oil painting.
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Source: Washington Free Beacon