Covid Central Park (2020)

By Patrick Webb

I first came across the humorous and deadly serious figure of Punchinello in 1989 at the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice in the frescoes and drawings of G.D. Tiepolo. I was immediately attracted to Punchinello. His phallic red nose and white hat struck me with their sexual provocativeness. His mask not only disguised him but marked him as an outsider. I realized that Punchinello, the trickster or fool from the Italian theatrical tradition of the Commedia dell’Arte could become the protagonist for my contemporary queer narratives.

My version of Punchinello is distinctly different from that found in the Commedia dell’Arte — slimmer without hump, driven by his sexual appetite and search for self, Punchinello is I and not I. He is both the other and the Other. He is my friends and lovers and not. The idea of form parallels the idea of narrative; both are products of a combination of specific personal memory and larger structural, symbolic, and metaphorical considerations. Punchinello continues to engage me. He resists definition. He disrupts expectation. He forces the viewer away from a purely abstract or formal interpretation of painting and into a fictive world of complex narratives and multiple identities. He is a ridiculous clown taken from a distant culture and reinvented to speak for me now.