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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.)