ABSTRACT
The life of Chaim Soutine is a harrowing fable of aspirations impossible to realize, emotions impossible to appease, appetites impossible to satisfy. Soutine is, indeed, a crucial example of the paradox of Expressionism. Soutine is—above all—a painter, an artist of a certain type, dreaming the dream of the museums, his talent, to the realization of an art which the dimensions of his own temperament and the desperation of his quest almost preclude him from carrying to its exalted conclusion. Soutine puts us through something like his own intense dislocations. Soutine had no biography outside his art; one might even say that his art was a substitute for a biography. Expressionism is—after realism—the most conservative. And in the dialectics of Expressionism, where only the painting is present, there is something essential left out. In a sense, Soutine had no biography outside his art; one might even say that his art was a substitute for a biography.
