Two Birds 1952

Here's Milton Avery's print, *Two Birds*, made in 1952. It's a linocut, so he's carved into a block and then printed it, leaving us with this cool stark contrast of dark and light. I bet Avery liked the graphic punch of the black ink against the paper. It’s simple, right? But look closer, and you can see how he uses the negative space to define the birds, giving them this quirky, almost cartoon-like quality. I can imagine him, carving away at that linoleum, figuring out the fewest lines to suggest a wing, a beak, the curve of a body. It’s like he’s distilling the idea of a bird down to its essence. And the way he overlaps the shapes, it almost feels like they’re having a conversation, a secret avian tête-à-tête. I bet other artists like Elizabeth Murray and Philip Guston were looking at prints like these. It’s all one big conversation, isn’t it?