Pablo Bronstein

An assemblage of different architectural forms on a faded blue facade, this drawing is replete with campy humor. To make it, Pablo Bronstein adopted a pencil, wash, and watercolor technique commonly used in the 1700s and 1800s by British satirical artists, including Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruikshank. Satire is also present here. The building comments on the picturesque-a genre of European painting that paired rural landscapes with architectural elements-but Bronstein synthesizes mostly real architectural reference points with entirely fictive ones. In so doing, he teases the presupposed beauty of the picturesque, taking it toward much more unsightly ends.