The Crack-Up 1973

CHARLES BLACKMAN (1928-2018)

The Crack-Up 1973

oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas
96.0 x 96.0 cm
signed and dated upper left: BLACKMAN 73

Provenance:
The Blackman Trust, Melbourne
Private collection, New South Wales, acquired from the above in 2002

Reference:
Amadio, N., Charles Blackman – The Lost Domains, A.H & A.W Reed Pty Ltd, Sydney, 1980, pp. 128 (illus.), 129, 132, 144

Menzies is pleased to present for private sale The Crack-Up 1973 by Charles Blackman. This compelling dual portrait is one of a select series of four paintings devoted to F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), the great American novelist of the Jazz Age. In The Crack-up, Blackman focuses upon the volatile psychodrama of Fitzgerald’s relationship with Zelda Sayre, his wife and muse. As Nadine Amadio observes, ‘The Crack-up is the most psychologically unnerving and moving image in the Fitzgerald series … As a device the split love/life/personality works strongly on a visual as well as an emotional level … Fitzgerald had loved himself in Zelda and the mirror is now fractured.’

Cameron Menzies, Chairman & Head of Private Sales

cmenzies@menziesartbrands.com
+61 (0) 466 636 142