Catalogue sparkling like the surface of the ocean at night

The setting sun goes way back in the history of art. This same sun, which in the middle ages served as a mere background detail, is responsible for the melancholy in the Scream that is so characteristic of Munch's work. Though it shines and warms us, the sun also always sets, leaving us behind in utter darkness. Matthew Day Jackson’s work New Days (after Roger White) is a sharp reply to Sun, a painting by Roger White. Day Jackson's version is darker, more mysterious. It seems like the moment when the sun shines on the horizon just before setting, or just before rising. The moment when the world is nothing more than shadows, but when points of light can still be discerned. Day Jackson adds a new sun to the long list of suns we already had. He shows that an artist embodies history. ‘History is a part of every individual action, of everything we do. We do not choose history; history chooses us.’