Felt sense of being watched

MFA in Boston 5/8/17

I was intrigued by this pastel painting Tree Trunk by Arthur Dove. I was drawn in enough to take this photograph of the painting, purposely including the reflections of other patrons in the gallery space because, to me, they enhanced my felt sense about the painting that I was being watched.

It was only later that I read the following quote by critic Paul Rosenfeld whose observations of Dove’s abstractions meshed with my own:

“The represented objects look at us. There is something behind them, something in them, which watches us inquisitively: menacingly at times, at others with secret complicity.”