JUTTA KOETHER

Here it is: a diva. Dwelling on past lives and long goodbyes. / Streaming forward into an impossible fifth season and far back into the depths of time. / Duchamp on a feedback loop. Slip into ellipsis. / A feminine force, sacred and mischievous, ambivalent.

—Jutta Koether

Titled after the troubled and tragic Warhol superstar, Edie Sedgwick, Edie (1983) depicts a female nude, fragmented by the canvas’s frame. Two geometric forms—one tear-shaped, the other ovular—float beside her body, echoing the contours of her breasts and genitals. Its brushy impasto and red-and-black palette emphasize the materiality of paint, here presented as a metaphor for flesh. Dense and deliberately crude, and oscillating between abstraction and figuration, the composition of Edie transforms the canvas into a suggestive, bodily terrain.

JUTTA KOETHER
Edie
1983
Oil on canvas
10 1/16 x 10 1/16 inches (25.5 x 25.5 cm)
© Jutta Koether
Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein