pirosmani stack003 + Duplication

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"A strange beast, stretched tight like a rope, stared at me anxiously, questioningly, obviously suffering, but incapable of voicing its pain" wrote Paustovsky when he saw the Giraffe for the first time. Since then it has often been said that the gaze of these animals was that of Pirosmani himself, the self-taught vagabond who, like the African painter described by Kahnweiller, "does not paint what he sees, but what he knows." If the animals and the human beings have the same gaze, why then do I have the impression that the animals are "staring at me," and
that the humans are looking through me? (Whether it be this Georgian odalisque or the noble, moustachioed figures like the group known as the "five Stalins," in which I always sensed an involuntary affinity with the portrait of Joseph Vissarionovich by Picasso, which
raised such a scandal in its time.)