Miss Bagdad

The young woman's right eye is gleaming but her left one stares out emptily into space. It is white, like the bottom of her face, which stands out like a mask. Her bright red mouth adds vibrancy to this otherwise lifeless space. Her hair is strewn with colourful accessories that merge with her short, unruly locks.

Forty years after Miss Nice, a collage in the SMAK Collection, Raysse brought back the "Miss" figure, mainly in paintings. His world view during the 2000s appeared in the themes of the masquerade and the tableau vivant, setting a carnival-like tone that this partially "masked" face recalls.

Raysse's painting Miss Baghdad is in the Pinault Collection. It was shown for the first time at the major retrospective exhibition devoted to the artist held at the Palazzo Grassi in 2015.