2002

Untitled (after "Tomb of the Diver," Paestum)

American, born 1935

Water is implied here in the bright, impenetrable blue through which the black silhouette of a diver plunges. Moskowitz has long been fond of mining motifs and images from the history of art, endowing them with new life, form, and meaning. Here his source is the lithe figure in the fifth century BCE fresco Tomb of the Diver in Paestum, Italy. Plummeting through air between a platform and a small rippling pool, the ancient diver seems almost weightless. In Moskowitz's drawing, however, the diver's plunge is held within the paper's borders, and his mass and density are emphasized by the opacity of the black pastel and the blue ground.