Dancing Crab Ghost Painting (Primary Title)
Richard Francisco, American, born 1942 (Artist)
Fifty Works for Fifty States: In 2008, in a unique partnership with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Vogels distributed twenty-five hundred works across the country, giving fifty works to one art museum in each of the fifty states. This exhibition, The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States, showcases the fifty works VMFA received as part of that initiative, which bears the same title. As a diverse and rich body of work, the Vogels' generous giftattests to their passion and commitment to sharing contemporary art with the public.
Richard Francisco Francisco frequently combines precisely painted and vivid watercolors with shapes cut out of balsa wood. In the 1970s and '80s, he often showed with other artists who similarly explored the border between three-dimensional painting and sculpture. Commenting on his painted constructions, Francisco explains, "I would rather build a drawing than draw one." Dancing Crab Ghost Painting, from the larger Ghost Paintings series, produces an optical illusion of movement, as crab claws appear to move up and down as the viewer changes vantage points. Although Southern Lightning appears less representational at first glance, the artist has cut anabstract pattern into the shape of a lightning bolt with a Southwestern color palette, transforming the watercolor into a literal object.
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