Alabama goes voting

All that was missing from the Fauve master, Louis Valtat's depiction of the President's great rally for Alabama of last week-end, was the pointillist sea of little red hats. 

How well the swooning basses mimed the maestro's anguished spine, the brasses and the drums arrayed to let the true faith shine. 

To each his own mode, I suppose, 
of delineating the pendancy of a
great moment. Valtat painted the
alternative interpretation, him-
self, to the aroused, fused, and
thundering mass in his orchestra
canvas: the other state, so to
speak, of mind enacted in the
same great moment, of voting. We
have a President who relies upon
the one, and a culture cognizant
of the other. Each of his canvas-
es gives us the glimpse into the
aspirations of the act, indeed
their wellspring, which marks it
as subject to the greatest vari-
ation. Now we test the power of
privity, to counsel this conduct.
I do not believe any Alabamans
are impervious to the finer sec-
rets of this moment, their own.

Louis Valtat

1869 - 1952

The orchestra

ca 1922

Boy drawing

1914

Matthew Holt

  Sara Reverberi, photography