Gallery Audio Tour
Grayslake Campus: A-Wing
Linda Kardoff
Untitled (dancer) | 1987.10Pa
Audio Tour
In this audio clip the narrator describes Kardoff's piece.
Length: 0:2:32 (two minutes and thirty-two seconds)
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About the Piece
Untitled (dancer), 1987Oil on linen
1987.10 Pa
This painting was originally commissioned for the President’s Office of the CLC campus.
Kardoff has won numerous awards in CLC Recent Works art competitions. Formerly of Grayslake, she now resides in San Diego, CA.
Narration Text
Linda Kardoff follows a rich tradition of artists who have been inspired by capturing the figure in motion: Degas, the painter of dancers; Toulouse-Lautrec whose beautiful gestural drawings depicted the nightlife of Montmartre; and Duchamp who included many facets of the same figure in his Nude Descending a Staircase.In this painting of a dancer practicing at the barre, Linda Kardoff captures the motion and dimension of dance. While a photograph might have frozen every detail, her portrayal is not static, but flowing. The lines ripple with ease over the surface of the canvas. But it is not just the quality of line that lends movement to the painting. Color and repetition of shape also play a part. Kardoff uses the primary colors – red, yellow and blue – to guide our eye from foreground, to background, to middle ground and back. No matter where our eye tries to rest, our gaze is always drawn to the principle figure in the foreground. It is not only the color that draws us there, but also the fact that the figure is in the same plane as the viewer. The figure is cropped at head and torso forcing it forward. Repetition of shape is another device used to direct our attention throughout the space of the composition. The dancer in the foreground is framed by the rectangular dimensions of the canvas. The window in the background frames another dancer with a rectangle of the same proportions, only rotated, and the painting on the wall brings our attention forward again. The blue horizontal line under that painting begins to play tricks with our perception of depth. It is much brighter and more intense than the two horizontal violet bars we know must be in front of it. Now we are faced with the dilemma of space. It occurs to us that we may actually be gazing into a mirror and that what we had previously determined as objects in front of us may well be behind us! There is another spatial trick up Kardoff’s sleeve. Look at the dancer in the background. It appears to be the same dancer, but it cannot be a mirror image. Kardoff has put another pose of the same dancer in the painting to complete the study of movement on the dance floor and throughout the composition.
Written by Jane Ellefson, Gallery Preparator, Robert T. Wright Gallery, College of Lake County
