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1946

Eight-and-a-quarter feet tall by seven-and-a-quarter feet wide, 1946 is a 1992 oil painting by Christopher Brown on canvas. Dynamically balancing dark and light, it shows a crowded view from behind of about two dozen men, women and children assembled like parade watchers on a wet city street in hats and clothes consistent with the year 1946. Along the left of the crowd, a few of the people appear to be arriving or leaving. Rippling outstretched above the crowd, part of a large US flag is in view at the top of the painting–-from the center to the right edge of the painting.

The successively more distant figures in the crowd do not appear as diminished in size or as distanced as in a natural view, but resemble the view through a telephoto lens. Also they are smeary in a way that evokes the effects of motion and low light on images captured with a camera. All together, 1946 seems to suggest a still-frame from a home movie, which was shot as if by someone on a ladder or holding the camera high above their head at a WWII victory parade.

Yet 1946 also looks like a work of art, and a painting. There is a surrealistic vibrancy to the red of several jackets, against the murky drabness of neighboring figures, as well as to the white of a few hats and partially visible shirts. There is a too-completely-negating darkness in the shade, dappling and obscuring much of the crowd.

In the center of the painting, a man runs along the edge of the crowd in an extraordinarily white overcoat, which has billowed up behind him, and wearing what seems to be a black Bowler hat.

A little ahead of the man in the Bowler, a figure entering the crowd, and another sprinting away from it, are both wearing what may be white service uniforms with a yellow cast. Behind the man and to his right there appears a left cheek and part of the neck of a white person with an orange flower or button in their jacket.

Despite having a documentary quality, it’s not really clear what 1946 is showing or about.

If it’s to do with a parade, for example, is the parade about to start, over or underway? Is it even possible to say whether it’s early, late or the middle of the day? It hardly seems for certain that the setting is a street. Brown has so closely framed our view, we wouldn’t necessarily expect to see a street sign, a store front or a curb. Crosswalk markings could be obscured by the glow reflecting from the wet street.

Rather than a particular event, place and time, what Brown seems to be showing is broad civic unity and participation, and showing people oriented together toward what lies ahead.