Sam Drukker lets his people emerge from his canvases as if they are coming to meet us

Much of what we do, feel and fear has occupied artists for centuries. Wieteke van Zeil links art details to current events. This week: elbow.

Without necessarily intending to do so, some art from completely different times and countries belongs to a group: the group of unfinished art† For an artist, I can imagine, a work never feels finished. Or at the very least, the choice to call a work ‘finished’ will never be completely natural for the maker. After all, that maker is the one who could always tinker with it. Leonardo da Vinci was never satisfied enough to name a work of art – the Mona Lisa left his studio after sixteen years, the Madonna in the cave after about twenty years – and Michelangelo became so famous with his unfinished work that it is impossible to imagine what it should have looked like. Bee are images of prisoners who seem to free themselves from the marble, it is precisely this struggle of human form from hard stone that has become part of the meaning. The artwork as a puzzle what we can do ourselves. Still, they weren’t meant to be. It was only later that there were artists who deliberately did not finish their work. This portrait is an example of that. It’s so subtly unfinished that I sat looking at it for a moment before I realized it.

Actually, those red stripes lured me. Dark red as oxblood and seemingly useless; a sleeve doesn’t have to have bloody streaks. I thought it sharpened the man. Painter Sam Drukker does this more often, suddenly setting a few bright accents. That has something to do with the atmosphere. Drukker does the same here with a few sky-blue stripes. Furthermore, the man, the immensely wealthy entrepreneur and philanthropist John Fentener van Vlissingen, is rather moody and unusually haughty for a Drukker’s portrait. He looks like someone with power over us. As a viewer we are already behind; at least not on the same level. While in the rest of the exhibition it is striking with how much softness Sam Drukker depicts his models and how much proximity he creates.

Why isn’t the elbow there? A black smudge is somewhat suggestive. It’s nothing really, that smudge and a few stains. We fill the void ourselves in our thoughts. in another, beautiful unfinished portrait of painter Alice Neel I also saw a missing arm. In fact, the entire body of the James Hunter portrayed by her consists only of a line, in contrast to his elaborate, thoughtful face. Hunter posed only once, then he was called up to fight in Vietnam. Alice Neel then chose to leave the work unfinished, as a symbol for the soldier who is no longer quite there.

Sam Drukker lets his people emerge from his canvases as if they are coming to meet us. These people are still half trapped in the fabric of the canvas, just as Michelangelo’s prisoners are still trapped in the marble. It makes Fentener van Vlissingen more vulnerable, like a blinking phenomenon. He’s not quite there, at the edges, in stark contrast to the almost intimidating presence of his face. Drukker gives an unshakable man of enormous power such a human incomplete edge. That keeps him fascinated.