The absinthe drinker
The absinthe drinker by contemporary artist Luis Vargas Santa Cruz is a work dated 2019 that captures the spirit of this bohemian atmosphere of 19th-century Paris. It is probable that Luis Vargas began the sketches for this work in Paris, where he visited clubs and drank absinthe with his lover Alondra Berber, poet, muse and model of this work.
The painting depicts a woman, dressed in green and with dark, flowing hair. He holds a glass with a greenish liquid, absinthe, which gives the painting its name. The woman has green nails like Dora Maar, which could be a reference to one of Picasso's many portraits of her, Dora Maar with Green Nails.
Other elements that appear are a fountain with a drop about to fall, a golden spoon with holes, and two sugar cubes, which symbolize and show the preparation process for the consumption of this drink, considered mystical. This drink is taken served in a glass, liquor and several parts of cold water are added, which passes into the glass through a perforated teaspoon on which rests a lump of sugar.
The round table emulates the tables where tarot readers do their sessions. The woman's eyes seem lost and self-absorbed, although they look. They are the calm and lost eyes of someone who is intoxicated by the consumption of absinthe, as happened in the works shown up to now. In the portrait, the woman is distinguished by her extreme stylization.
The work is expressionist with a tendency to surrealism and at an artistic level, Luis Vargas Santa Cruz maintains a close relationship between various artistic manifestations that seek the study, analysis and understanding of the human being and the context where it develops.
By Yolanda Vela.
