Published alongside an exhibition by Farewell Books, The Fourth Part of the Day is Already Gone features paintings and a transcribed interview by Anthony Cudahy. Cudahy’s inspiration for the paintings exhibited stemmed from a fascination in the figural and spiritual features of the individuals fossilized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius upon the Roman village of Pompeii in AD 79. The Pieter Bruegel painting The Harvesters shares responsibility as a source of appropriation and influence for Cudahy, whose paintings negotiate an abstraction of space and form that is distant from Bruegel’s sense of formal technique, but not from his sensitivity to human scale and emotionality.
In conversation about impact of these sources, Cudahy articulates his interest: “A moment preserved so long, under the ground. A cataclysmic, unavoidable event. No escape possible. What remains to be uncovered and decoded later.” About sensing another painter’s intent through their mark, he states: “I feel less alone in the universe when a mark made by a painter resonates with me. Out of so many possibilities, another person spoke your language. Was on your wavelength. It’s magic.”
The Fourth Part of the Day is Already Gone was exhibited through September and October of 2015 at the now-closed bookstore Farewell Books, which was based in Austin, Texas.