In Undine's art, Machiavelli is the nexus through which several, conflicting realities collide. These are the strains that the artist, with an acute yet popular visual vocabulary, brings before the eye. Imperium Romanum by its very Roman Senate. His instrument is, not a violin, but hybridized into a flask of wine, a pernicious pleasure. Friese Undine's 'decadence' is, like the collective lives of men, never quite as simple, nor as reducible as anyone would wish.
Any perception otherwise is quick and facile.
There is a tentative insouciance about his face. The subject of this canvas seems the beast that, blundering, aspires to a humanity, the accoutrements of which he merely apes. In others, there is a bitter sting, which casts doubts on common humanity. At left a party hostess, in her gesture to speak no word, frames the assembled even more for critical regard. The spirit of the Commodity Exchange, of Wall Street, enters in as inspiration.