What I am posting today is the bit from Marina Tsvetaeva’s 1929 essay on Natalia Goncharova that addresses the repeatability of themes illustrated with some pairings of 1st period works alongside 2nd period shown roughly to scale with each other. Seeing the pairings and comprehending what transpires between them, the changes that take place, is vital. This is the key to understanding Goncharova’s practice as a whole (denying originality, anti-individualism etc) but specifically her practice in the mid part of the 20th c., the part I am focused on. I have had the tremendous good fortune to be able to identify examples of this practice in a way that has yet to be appreciated. That’s what I’m doing here I guess is attempting to gain appreciation for something unusual and extraordinary. I didn’t choose this role, it chose me. I am challenging popular conceptions of what she did. It’s important to realize that what I am presenting is not my opinion or my feelings but rather cold facts, data observed with an analytical eye for detail. To read Tsvetaeva’s passage on the repeatability of themes is, for me, to gain confirmation of my observations. It’s fascinating to read and I ask you to do it. Please. Willful ignorance is not accepted. If eyes and minds are not open then her work will continue to be lost and misunderstood. Come with me on this journey.