Editor's Note
It was a tough spring. One of the nicest and easiest surprises of a season that definitely had its ups and downs, however, was the issue of Rio that practically edited itself. I was amazed at the virtuosity, the quality of the work I received in the mail (and the e-mail) over the last couple of months. Almost everything I received could have been published in this issue; it was a matter of skimming the cream off of the top of a very fresh bottle of milk.
So, in other words, thanks.
Hope the rest of you enjoy the issue.
Cynthia Davidson
Notable Quote
(from Briefing for a Descent Into Hell by Doris Lessing, New York: Knopf, 1971)
In some of Goya's earlier pictures, not those that describe war or madness, but the gay and gallant pictures, there is something that disturbs, but you don't know what it is. Not at first. It is because of any group of those people, the charming, the formal, the pastoral, the essentially civilised, there is always one that looks straight out of the group, out of the canvas, into the eyes of the person who is looking at the picture. This person who refuses to conform to the conventions of the picture the artist has set him in, questions and, in fact, destroys the convention. It is as if the artist said to himself: I supposed I've got to paint this kind of picture, it is expected of me--but I'll show them. As you stand and gaze in, all the rest of the picture fades away, the charmers in their smiles and flounces, the young heroes, the civilisation, all these dissolve away because of that long straight gaze from the one who looks back out of the canvas and says silently that he or she knows it is all a load of old socks. He is there to tell you he thinks so.