16 Nov Jean-luc writes to Henry: the unbearable weight of Ancestors

Ancestors and despair in contemporary art

Letter from Jean-luc to Henry

Dear Henry,

I hope these words reach you in a moment of serenity, though I fear I no longer know what that means. How are you, my friend? Does your health still sustain you? Can you still look toward the future without the crushing weight that has long suffocated me? I need to believe that at least you are not consumed by the same melancholy that follows me day and night.

I am writing because before me lies a work that offers no escape: Ancestors. I cannot look away, nor can I stop fearing it. I have chosen to divide this letter into paragraphs, so the burden of reading it may be lighter. I ask you to walk with me through it, with that clarity of thought I have always envied in you.

As always I will divide this letter of mine into paragraphs so you can read it more easily.

1. The onset of anguish
2. The technical language
3. Objects and symbols
4. The state of mind
5. The judgment I ask of you

1.The onset of anguish

The title Ancestors might sound reassuring, suggestive of roots and belonging. In truth, it deceives. What I see is not protection, but an abyss. Not ancestors who guard, but shadows looming over us, stern witnesses to our helplessness.

The male face at the center of the canvas is warped, almost broken apart. The eyes are wide open, suspended between fear and paralysis. The lips seem ready to scream, but remain locked in sterile tension: a broken voice, never released. It is a portrait that translates existential incommunicability into image, striking you like a mirror that reflects your own inner muteness.

2.The technical language

As an art critic I cannot ignore its structure. The black line outlining face and objects acts like a cage: not mere contour, but a painterly cloisonné that traps everything within. The dense, textured color fields are scraped, as if oil pastels had been consumed in rage, leaving behind the scars of previous marks.

The colors seek no harmony, only discord: the icy blue of the jacket clashing with the burning red of the tie, the ashen pallor of the skin rising against a background of violet and pink. That background, seemingly innocent, evokes a psychiatric estrangement. It is post-expressionism tainted with cubist fractures and disturbing primitivism — perfectly measured to destabilize.

3.Objects and symbols

Each object is a symbol weighted like a sentence.

The rotary phone: not nostalgia, but a technological fossil. A symbol of communication that no longer occurs, silent yet deafening.

The vase of wilted flowers: an icon of entropy, of life consuming itself without renewal. I look at it and see my own dwindling energy.

The green android in the window: the most unsettling presence. Not memory, but a ghost of the present. A technological warden who observes without emotion, generating a suffocating sense of panopticon. I cannot tell if it judges, spies, or merely waits. Its existence alone destroys any possibility of intimacy.

4.The state of mind

Henry, what tears at me is that Ancestors does not only portray a face — it portrays myself. I am that figure caught between scream and silence. I live that same emotional paralysis, the same psychic void.

I could dress it up in psychoanalytic jargon: “castration anxiety,” “genealogical non-belonging.” But the truth is the work resists diagnosis. It is nothing but a wound. A painted wound that never heals, that offers no catharsis. There is no aesthetic redemption, no consoling beauty. Only the raw testimony of a fall.

5.The judgment I ask of you

This is why I write, Henry. Because my own gaze is no longer enough. I need your judgment. Not on its aesthetic quality — flawless in its technical coherence — but on its power to speak to our time.

Do you feel the same heaviness? Do you too see in Ancestors the portrait of an age that no longer believes in the future? I see it as a collective mirror: ancestors that suffocate us, objects that condemn us, specters that deny us any escape. Tell me if you feel it too, or if I alone have crossed the threshold into despair.

6.The conclusion

The more I stare at this work, the more I realize it is not criticism, but a verdict. Every line, every color, every symbol tells me I am becoming that face. Paralyzed. Imprisoned by my own fears. Unable to elude the gaze of others — or my own.

I end this letter wishing you what I can no longer wish for myself: that you may have far more fortune than I. That life may spare you this oppression, that you may still find in art a balm — and not a sentence.

With affection and regard,
Jean-luc 

There is nothing more alienating than drawing