It is as though Titian has yielded up a canvas to Jackson Pollock or Asger Jorn. Indeed, we may remember that some of the more playful yet serious work of the Danish master consisted in, precisely, daubing an inescapably modern image on top of some conventional pre-existing piece or representational painting.
Where Casson resembles Gypsy Rose Lee more than Asger Jorn is what he withholds (protects?) from our excited gaze is all his own work, and clearly glamorous rather than, as in most of Jorn's gleeful perversions, basically boring or naive. What would be the point of Casson's art if we did not very much want to see the beauties partially hidden beneath the seemingly random overlays of alien paint, which are sometimes applied in savage dashes, sometimes simulate a literal collage made with other elements in their own way just as highly finished?
