Jim Avignon: All Along the Watchtower

Acrylic on Paper

320 x 220 cm

2020

« When I moved to Berlin 1987, the Berlin Wall was still standing. At that time, I had mixed feelings about it. Of course it felt strange and frightening but I was also fascinated to live in a kind of gated community with all those funny freaks who made West Berlin so unique in the eighties. 

I painted the characters of Dante and Virgil out of Delacroix famous painting "The Barque of Dante" (1822, Musée du Louvre) in a kind of frozen positon, during their hell ride on top of the wall in a sort of limbo situation. It is clear that the vessel will fall down but yet it remains to be seen on which side! There is also a little man in the right corner doing a shit in the shadow of the wall who is a reference to Marc Chagall’s painting « Over the City“.