Checkmate at Dawn
Painting Two
"Checkmate at Dawn"
Otherwise known as "The Preemptive Strike".
A series of four small paintings,
an abstracted still life of Japanese hand carved chess pieces,
king and knight, in a real check mate that appeared in the chess section of the
New York Times,
sometime in the autumn of 1965 (The Greenwich Village Period).
Oil on canvas.
The white king's nocturnal initiative does not go well.
His forces are denied deployment because of the knight's ability to damage the
king's complex equipment while taking advantage of the king's top-heavy
over-organized and ponderous thick-wittedness; being technology-dependent and
over-regulated; inhibited of the opportunities of individual initiative (like
that of the astounding successes of the Australian forces in Europe during world
war one). In essence, while the bulk of the knight's fighting force is
still dormant, the white king is defeating himself.
Click here to go to the next painting.
Click here for the complete overview, The Premonition of the Checkmate at Dawn.
Click here to return to the same place on the Greenwich Village Period Series page.
Click here to return to the same place in Voice Introduction for Oil Paintings page four.