L’Après Midi D’un Faune
Catalogue No. 668
Artist's CR 609
2004
Kinkell
Oil on canvas
32 x 36 inches / 81 x 91 cm
Collection: Private collection
The graceful figure smeared in excrement, standing in a balletic pose in front of the gaoler with a truncheon, struck me as being so surreal and bizarre that I must be mistaken. No one could have gone to all that trouble. The image must represent something else.
Eventually I realised that it was in fact a scene from a rehearsal of a new production of the Nijinsky L’Après Midi d’un Faune. Evidently they intended putting it on to entertain the other prisoners.
'Artist's Notes on War Paintings', Gerald Laing, unpublished manuscript, 2004