Artcollection AMC, Amsterdam  

This is what one calls a perspective of suction. As the observer one is pulled deep into the picture.  A large number of naked people are standing pushed together in a ring that is depicted in from the top down.  The edges of the drawing cut off the lower parts of the figures, the white emptiness in the centre is edged by their heads.  It seems as if you yourself are situated in the midpoint of the ring; perhaps you have just had an accident and lost consciousness and now you are slowly regaining your reason in the middle of a circle of bystanders.

         The man in the middle, underneath in the middle bends towards you.  Most of the other heads look upwards.  What they find there is not known, there is only an empty hole to be seen.  The suction effect in the representation makes me think of the dome paintings of the renaissance, like those of Correggio in the cathedral of Parma where the Ascension of Mary into heaven through the roof of the cupola and the manner in which the naked figures that surround her are depicted, gives you the feeling that you are being sucked into heaven directly behind her.

SASKIA BECKERINGH