Jar c. 1938

John Tarantino made this drawing of a jar, with what looks like blue pigment on paper. I love to imagine Tarantino, with his supplies all laid out, figuring out how to get the shapes just right. I mean, that circle of text is so perfectly round! I wonder if he used a stencil. And then these wild yet perfectly balanced flowers and leaves, like he’s seeing them not as they are but as they *could* be. I bet he had to stop and start a bunch of times, maybe even throw out a sketch or two before landing on this. The medium here feels so delicate, like it could smudge if you touched it. But then the lines are so firm and sure. I’m thinking of other artists who worked with this kind of tension: Guston, maybe, or Cy Twombly. They’re all having a conversation across time, like, “Hey, I see what you’re doing, and I’m gonna try something like that myself.” It's like we can trace these ideas rippling out, each artist teaching and learning from each other.