Rubenesque Woman Has Picassoesque Face

HANOVER, NH—Meredith Pierce, 33, a Hanover-area elementary-school teacher, is attracting the attention of the art world with her Rubenesque figure and Picassoesque face. “Her plump form reminds me of the voluptuous servant girl who voraciously eats the roast pig in Rubens’ Flemish Feast (1610),” Oxford University art-history professor Edmund Kent said. “But it is Pierce’s grotesque, asymmetrical face that truly distinguishes her: Her crooked nose and badly misplaced eyes evoke Picasso’s early experimentations with cubism, when he was struggling to capture the fractured nature of modern life, and her severely exaggerated forehead reminds me of Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon and other mid-period abstract works. Pierce’s face is a brilliant summation of the shattered, hideous absurdity of the human condition.” Pierce will be transferred to the Prado next month for a two-year installation.