{"id":83797,"date":"2015-03-18T19:59:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T23:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=83797"},"modified":"2015-03-19T10:18:59","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T14:18:59","slug":"roz-chasts-pysanky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/18\/roz-chasts-pysanky\/","title":{"rendered":"Roz Chast\u2019s Pysanky<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"chast2\"<\/a>

Roz Chast, Egg #77<\/i>, 2010-2013, eggshell, dye, and polyurethane, 2 1\/4″ x 1 5\/8″. Image via Danese Corey Gallery<\/p><\/div>\n

Roz Chast does excellent work on paper\u2014and sure enough, her latest memoir, Can\u2019t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?<\/em>, has just won a National Book Critics Circle Award\u2014but I think her real medium is the egg. She\u2019s been doing great things with pysanky<\/em> (i.e. Ukrainian painted eggs) for at least a decade. Her latest efforts will be on display, along with her cartoons and her work in textiles, at Danese Corey Gallery starting this Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Alexandra Schwartz explained in the\u00a0The New Yorker <\/em>last year<\/a>, the pysanky<\/em> tradition goes back to pagan times, \u201cas do the eggs\u2019 motifs: the sun; triangles that represent air, light, and water or birth, life, and death, from long before the Holy Trinity came along; plants and animals; talismanic lines and spirals indicating eternity.\u201d <\/p>\n

But Chast has elected to forgo the conventional imagery\u2014her eggs are painted with the same grimacing neurotics and beleaguered everymen you see in her New Yorker<\/em> cartoons. As she told the\u00a0New York Times <\/em>in 2004<\/a>, \u201cI had always wanted to learn how to paint eggs \u2026 I saw at the time that it had real possibilities for transferring my stuff to it.\u201d Carol Kino notes that<\/p>\n

\n

many of her eggs play pretty sophisticated games with perspective and space. One depicts people sitting in a subway car that has no beginning or end. Another shows five reclining bodies, floating dreamily against the indigo depths of a starry sky \u2026 the technique heightens a gently philosophical undercurrent that is only vaguely hinted at in the cartoon drawings.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Chast\u2019s pysanky<\/em> are on display through April 18.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"chast3\"<\/a>

Eggs #86, #90, #87,#69, #73, and #72,<\/i> 2010\u20132013, eggshell, dye, and polyurethane, 2 1\/4″ x 1 5\/8″. Image via Danese Corey Gallery<\/p><\/div>

\"chast1\"<\/a>

Eggs #80, #78, and #67,<\/i> 2010\u20132013, eggshell, dye, and polyurethane, 2 1\/4″ x 1 5\/8″. Image via Danese Corey Gallery<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Dan Piepenbring is the web editor of <\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roz Chast does excellent work on paper\u2014and sure enough, her latest memoir, Can\u2019t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, has just won a National Book Critics Circle Award\u2014but I think her real medium is the egg. She\u2019s been doing great things with pysanky (i.e. Ukrainian painted eggs) for at least a decade. Her latest efforts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2384],"tags":[17470,134,17471,9231,67,17469,4447,282,40,3045],"class_list":["post-83797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look","tag-cant-we-talk-about-something-more-pleasant","tag-cartoons","tag-danese-corey-gallery","tag-eggs","tag-painting","tag-pysanky","tag-roz-chast","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-the-new-yorker","tag-ukraine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRoz Chast\u2019s Vibrant Painted Eggs<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The New Yorker cartoonist works in another medium\u2014pysanky, Ukrainian painted eggs\u2014and the results are incredible.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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