Curfew 1960

Jules Engel made this print, "Curfew", using ink on paper, and right away I’m imagining the scrape of the litho crayon, the push and pull, the back and forth of marks trying to find a form. That big inky splodge in the middle, what is that? A cloud? A stain? All the spiky lines shooting out from it suggest a kind of explosion, or maybe something imploding. I wonder what Engel was thinking about, wrestling with, as he made this. Was he feeling confined? Or maybe he felt like he was bursting with energy and ideas? I love the contrast between the dense black ink and the pale paper. And those little drips and splatters at the bottom, they remind me that this was made by a human hand, not a machine. It’s like Engel is showing us the mess and the magic of the process all at once. He was an animator too, right? I bet he was interested in how a single gesture can create movement and tell a story. And that’s something I, as a painter, can really relate to.