Untitled 1916

This untitled work by Morton Schamberg looks like it came together through lots of looking and shifting as he was drawing, letting the image emerge bit by bit. I can imagine Schamberg in his studio, maybe a little impatient, trying to push beyond just describing things. It's almost like he's trying to make a diagram of seeing itself. The geometric forms create a sense of depth, but then flatten out again. I wonder if he was thinking about how machines were changing the way we see and understand the world, making it more abstract and fragmented. That charcoal line that loops around in the foreground - is it a rope, a shadow, or just a wandering thought made visible? It’s like he's saying, "Here's what I see, but also here's how I feel about seeing." He's in conversation with artists like Picasso and Braque, but he's also doing his own thing. It’s a reminder that painting is a way of thinking, and that every mark carries a little bit of the artist's soul.