Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing

Carefully composed using geometric zones of color, For James (III) seems to immediately propose a fundamental alternative to the very notion of a portrait painting—a genre with which Packer is often associated. Through the painting’s subject—a man lying alone on a bed—the work avoids a straightforward representation while also evoking a complexity and duality of feelings.

The painting is a direct reference to Titian’s The Flaying of Marsyas (1575), which includes a central, upside-down figure being brutally flayed—often interpreted to represent the freeing of the spirit from the physical body. As in many of Packer’s paintings, there is an implied intimacy between artist and subject—here resulting partly from the half-dressed figure’s torso, resting only on a bare mattress and suggesting a domestic or personal space that inherently protects the individual.