Last years 1999-2004

A second turning-point was the successful cancer operation in 1998. Sokolov returned to what, in a 1975 article for Leonardo, he had called the simpleton’s view of art, from which artists are aware of an object from several points of view simultaneously as when a child depicts a house as having three walls, or a face at once in full and profile. The later work is smaller, gentler, plays rather than struggles with material and owes much to children’s drawings.