An artist who takes a bite out of his own painting, and who derives his subject matter from a dream, is, in some sense, a private artist; and the later work, as Varnedoe has organized it, suggests an increasing absorption in a personal vocabulary composed of body parts; crosshatching patterns (an overworked motif of the 1970s); vases; clocks; skulls; specific borrowings from Duchamp, Picassso, Holbein, and a 16 th -century Grenewald altarpiece; little stick figures with bubble heads; and, in the most recent work, the image of a spiral galaxy.
Grenewald was an artist in the 16th century.