If one compares this sketch with the finished painting, it’s clear Robert changed models for the woman, though the pose and lighting remain quite similar. He also changes the heavy turtleneck sweater seen here for a more casual and attractive short-sleeved blouse. On a nearby sketchbook page, Robert has recorded the following observation by critic Friedhelm W. Fischer about artist Max Beckman: “Beckman’s pictures shift and recombine at the slightest touch, in full accord with his conception of history as a succession of tableaux in the ‘theatre of infinity.’” Robert’s original idea of having a woman situated between two symbolic elements, suggestive of love and death, has become a more elaborate and enigmatic tableau. Robert’s painting seems just as much to be about a work of art that quotes and recombines other works of art, a postmodern phantasmagoria of saturated images.